Open AccessChanges in the US Gender Gap in Wages in the 1960s
Author(s) -
Martha J. Bailey,
Thomas Helgerman,
Bryan Stuart
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
aea papers and proceedings
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2574-0776
pISSN - 2574-0768
DOI - 10.1257/pandp.20211020
Subject(s) - legislation , minimum wage , wage , government (linguistics) , labour economics , business , work (physics) , law , economics , political science , engineering , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy
In the 1960s, landmark legislation targeted the long-standing practice of labor market discrimination against US women. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), became the first piece of federal legislation mandating equal pay for equal work. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act followed in 1964 with a provision that more broadly prohibited any sex-based discrimination in employment. Complementing this legislation, the 1961 and 1966 FLSA amendments increased the real minimum wage by 24 percent by 1970 and almost doubled the number of workers it covered, extending the FLSA's provisions to an additional 22.6 million individuals (US Department of Labor 1961, 1970). These changes benefited many workers in some of the economy's lowest-earning industries, such as services, retail trade, and government (that is, schools and hospitals)-industries where many women worked.