[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 8134]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   50TH ANNIVERSARY OF EQUAL PAY ACT

                                  _____
                                 

                          HON. ROSA L. DeLAURO

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 5, 2013

  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, 119 years ago, in 1894, a study by the AAUW 
and the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor found that men were 
making more than twice as much as women for jobs like bookkeeping.
  Forty-eight years later, as millions of women like my mother entered 
the factories to help fight World War II, the War Labor Board issued 
General Order 16, declaring that men and women working the same job in 
the same factory should be paid the same wage.
  In 1945, the first Equal Pay Bill was introduced in the House by 
Chase Going Woodhouse, the second woman and first Democratic woman to 
be elected to the House from Connecticut. It was reintroduced every 
year for 18 years. President Dwight Eisenhower called it ``a matter of 
simple justice'' in his State of the Union.
  And 50 years ago this week--on June 10th, 1963--President John F. 
Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law.
  The Equal Pay Act was supposed to end, and I quote, ``the 
unconscionable practice of paying female employees less wages than male 
employees for the same job.'' But fifty years later, women are still 
paid only 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.
  It has been 50 years since the Equal Pay Act, and 120 years since we 
first studied pay inequity. Haven't America's women waited long enough? 
It is time to come together, give the Equal Pay Act real teeth. It is 
time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act so that men and women in the 
same job--get the same pay. It is that simple.

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