Jocelyn Samuels, Vice President for Education and Employment

by Jocelyn Samuels, Vice President for Education and Employment
National Women’s Law Center

Forty-five years ago today, the Equal Pay Act made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform equal work. 

You might think that 45 years would be enough time for a law to have lived up to its potential. But the wage gap persists — women still make, on average, only 77 cents on every dollar earned by men, and women of color fare even worse.

So what’s the problem? Some, like USA Today, would have you believe that the wage gap has little to do with continuing discrimination against women and much to do with the choices that women make, the education they have received, the fact that they don’t become entrepreneurs. That conclusion disregards the studies that have found that significant portions of the wage gap cannot, in fact, be explained by any factor other than discrimination. 

And how can we explain the persistence of discrimination? One significant reason is that the anti-discrimination laws have been weakened in ways that prevent them from serving the purposes Congress intended. Under Title VII, for example, the Supreme Court’s Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. decision makes it virtually impossible for women — or any employees, for that matter — to get into court to challenge pay discrimination against them. And courts have steadily undermined the Equal Pay Act to create gaping holes in the fabric of protections it was intended to provide.