The Equal Pay Act (EPA) was established by the American government in 1963. This law requires equal wages or salaries for every resident of the country, regardless of gender. The following paper is a literature review on the topic of the Equal Pay Act’s validity in the United States of America.
According to Fugiero (2014), laws prohibited American women from working long hours or night shifts during the twentieth century because they were obliged to take care of their children and do housework. On the other hand, men did not have any such restrictions on their professional activities. Laws were even written about how much weight women were allowed to lift. The Equal Pay Act changed this situation because many people did not consider it fair and believed that it was a gender-discriminatory practice.
Another source says that women were confused by these restrictions as they did not believe that employers could benefit from discriminatory hiring practices (“The Equal Pay Act: Equal pay for women,” 2015). Moreover, the female half of the population lacked financial independence and wanted to find worthy jobs, since there is no difference between male or female labor if the work is done well. The author of the third source places emphasis on the fact that women started to be hired for jobs that were considered to be only for men after the establishment of the EPA (“Comparable worth,” 2014). Nowadays, there are many controversies about how appropriate particular genders are for certain jobs.
The need for the Equal Pay Act emerged in America in the sixties because women felt abused and discriminated against due to restrictions that did not allow them to compete for well-paid jobs. Women started protesting and fighting for their rights to be employed and paid on an equal footing with men. There are many literature sources on this topic, but this review has covered the most popular and reliable articles.
References
Comparable worth. (2014). Web.
Fugiero, M. (2014). Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA). Web.
The Equal Pay Act: Equal pay for women. (2015). Web.