[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 66 (Friday, April 14, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E508]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       THE INTRODUCTION OF THE FAIR PAY ACT OF 2017 APRIL 4, 2017

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                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, April 14, 2017

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today is Equal Pay Day, which marks the 
number of additional days a woman must work to earn what a man earned 
by the end of last year. The 1963 Equal Pay Act (EPA), the first of the 
great civil rights statutes of the 1960s, has grown creaky with age and 
needs updating to reflect the new workforce, in which women work almost 
as much as men.
  The best case for a stronger and updated EPA occurred here in the 
Congress in 2003, when female custodians in the House and Senate won an 
EPA case after showing that female workers were paid a dollar less per 
hour for doing the same or similar work as men. Had these women not 
been represented by their union, they would have had an almost 
impossible task in using the rules for bringing and sustaining an EPA 
class action suit.
  Based on my own experience as the first woman to chair the Equal 
Employment Opportunity Commission, I again introduce the Fair Pay Act 
(FPA) on behalf of the average female worker, who is often first 
steered to, and then locked into, jobs with wages that are deeply 
influenced by the gender of women who have traditionally held such 
jobs. Much of the wage inequality women experience today is because of 
employer-steering and deeply rooted wage stereotypes, which result in 
wages being paid according to gender and not according to the skill 
necessary to do the job. I introduce the FPA because pay disparity most 
women face today stems mainly from the segregation of women and men in 
different jobs and paying women in female-dominated jobs systematically 
less. Two-thirds of white women and three quarters of African-American 
women work in just three areas: sales/clerical, service and factories. 
We need more aggressive strategies to break through the societal 
barriers present throughout history the world over, as well as 
employer-steering based on gender, which is as old as paid employment 
itself.
  The FPA requires that if men and women are doing comparable work, 
they are to be paid comparable wages. If a woman, for example, is an 
emergency services operator, a female-dominated profession, she should 
not be paid less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated profession, 
simply because each of these jobs has been dominated by one sex. If a 
woman is a social worker, a traditionally female occupation, she should 
not earn less than a probation officer, a traditionally male job, 
simply because of the gender associated with each of these jobs.
  The FPA, like the EPA, will not tamper with the legal burden. Under 
the FPA, as under the EPA, the burden will be on the plaintiff to prove 
discrimination. The plaintiff must show that the reason for the 
disparate treatment is gender discrimination, not legitimate market 
factors.
  Remedies to achieve comparable pay for men and women are not radical 
or unprecedented. State governments, in red and blue states alike, have 
shown that it is possible to eliminate the part of the pay gap that is 
due to discrimination. Twenty states have adjusted wages for female-
dominated professions, raising pay for teachers, nurses, clerical 
workers, librarians, and other female-dominated jobs that paid less 
than comparable male-dominated jobs. Minnesota, for example, 
implemented a pay equity plan when it found that traditionally female 
jobs paid 20 percent less than comparable traditionally male jobs. 
There may well be some portion of a gender wage gap that is traceable 
to market factors, but 20 states have shown that you can tackle the 
gender discrimination-based wage gap without interfering in the market 
system. States generally have closed the wage gap over a period of four 
to five years at a one-time cost of no more than three to four percent 
of payroll.
  In addition, many female workers routinely achieve pay equity through 
collective bargaining, and countless employers provide it on their own 
as they see women shifting out of vital female-dominated occupations as 
a result of the shortage of skilled workers, as well as because of the 
unfairness to women. Unequal pay has been built into the way women have 
been treated since Adam and Eve. To dislodge such deep-seated and 
pervasive treatment, we must go to the source, the traditionally female 
occupations, where pay is linked with gender and always has been.

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