Equal Pay Act 1963 — the first step and its shadow

On 11 June 1963, President John F. Kennedy signedthe Equal Pay Act — the first federal law in the USA to ban differences in paybetween women and men for "substantially the same work" within thesame establishment. Specific women stood behind the law: Congresswoman EdithGreen, Senator Maurine Neuberger, and the Commission on the Status of Women,chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt. Formally, it was an amendment to the Fair LaborStandards Act of 1938.

The courts gave it real force

_{In Corning Glass Works v. Brennan (1974), theSupreme Court ruled that paying men more for night work was not a lawfuljustification for a difference — the time of day does not create"different work". In Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. (1970), the courtrejected minor differences in duties as a pretext for lower rates for women.}

Equality that sees one axis misses most people

_{The law, however, had a built-in limitation: itconsidered only sex and "the same work in the same establishment".This was shown most clearly in DeGraffenreid v. General Motors (1976): Blackwomen employees, the first to be laid off, lost their case because the courtheld that they were not discriminated against "as women" (white womenhad jobs) nor "as Black people" (Black men had them). Discriminationat the intersection of race and sex was legally invisible. Legal scholarKimberlé Crenshaw described this gap, coining the term intersectionality in1989.
The data shows how real this shadow still is today.In the USA, a white woman earns about 83 cents for every dollar a white manearns — but a Black woman only 65 cents, and a Latina 58 cents (NWLC, 2024,full-time). The classic study by Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) adds themechanism: identical CVs with a "white" name received 50% moreinterview invitations than those with a name associated with a Black person. Sothe tour's first act teaches something easy to overlook: equality that measuresa single axis misses the very people who need it most.}

^{Sources:
Equal Pay Act of 1963; Corning Glass Works v.Brennan (1974); Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. (1970).
K. Crenshaw, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989; DeGraffenreid v.General Motors (1976).
National Women's Law Center, 2024 data (Black women: 65¢, Latinas: 58¢).
Bertrand, Mullainathan, American Economic Review, 2004.}

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