Equal Pay Act Of 1963 (EPA)

Despite the continuation of the gender pay gap and other acts of discrimination in the workforce, laws have been created to try and decrease this gap and provide protection to those who may face various forms of discrimination at work. One such law that provides protection against wage discrimination in the workforce, would be the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA). The EPA is an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) which was responsible for creating a right to minimum wage, and overtime pay, if an employee worked over forty hours a week (“Equal pay Act of 1963”). The EPA states that “No employer shall discriminate between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees at a rate less than at which he pays wages to employees

White collar workers included those who worked at an administrative level, at an executive level, or personnel who worked at a professional workplace. But in 1972, an addition to the EPA called the Education Amendments of 1972 changed this and allowed white collar workers to gain protection under this law (“Equal Pay Act of 1963”). Although the EPA was created as an expansion to the FLSA, it still failed to end wage discrimination in the workforce and was viewed as a trivial matter in the Supreme Court. The EPA did however, create a starting point for women to work towards ending wage discrimination in the workforce, and was one of the first steps towards equal pay for

Shortly after the EPA was created in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA) was created as a follow up to laws like the Civil right act of 1957, the civil rights act of 1960, and the EPA (“Civil Rights Act”). These laws essentially covered more forms discrimination in the workforce with the addition of public places, and had a much broader reach in terms of protecting those in the working class. The CRA made it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The act itself contained eleven articles each article protected the rights of people in public places and aimed at ending both discrimination in the workforce and segregation. Several amendments were added to the CRA and only helped improve it. Howard W. Smith was responsible for creating the amendment for the CRA (otherwise known as article VII) which directly linked with the EPA and continued furthering the rights of women in the workforce (“Civil Rights Act”). With the help of the CRA and the EPA women now have much more freedom in the workforce and could now work in the same type of jobs as men; on the contrary, women could not be refused jobs or equal wages because of their sex they often still received minimal pay or received much less than their male counterparts. Wage discrimination in the workforce has not ended and still continues