Silicon Valley, Wall Street, K Street share the following characteristics: all three are powerhouses, all three are the hallmarks of American capitalism, and all three are perpetual boys clubs.
In 2005, Ellen Pao joined the Silicon Valley powerhouse, a venture capital firm called Kleiner Perkins, as the chief of staff for John Doerr, a senior partner at the firm, and later became a junior investing partner. She was promised an opportunity to advance to senior investing roles, yet when the time came, she was passed over for the promotion, despite the fact that men with similar ranks and profiles were promoted. When Pao brought up the issue, she was promptly fired. In 2012, Ellen Pao sued Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination, and in 2015, the case went to trial. With similar cases being settled out of court, Pao v. Kleiner Perkins is regarded as a landmark trial. While Pao ultimately lost the case, she succeeded in drawing scrutiny to the unjust hiring and promotion practices that are common in Silicon Valley.
Unfortunately, Ellen Pao’s story is one that many women can relate to. Women make up the majority of the workforce, yet they remain a minority in high-ranking positions. Women are often overlooked for promotions and leadership roles in favor of their male counterparts. The gender wage gap, one of the most prevailing examples of gender inequality in the workplace, is an issue women have been fighting against for decades. Yet, when taking a look at our legislation, these issues shouldn’t exist today. In fact, they’re supposed to be illegal. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforced a series of laws that made it illegal to discriminate against applicants or employees based on race, color, religion, or gender. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, prohibits sex-based wage discrimination between men and women who perform jobs that require the same skill, experience, effort, and responsibility under the same working conditions. Thus, the question remains, why does gender inequality remain rampant in the workplace? Ineffective legislation, lack of oversight, a multitude of loopholes, and ingrained misogyny are some of the many reasons why women struggle to have their voices heard. Before examining the inefficacy of equal pay legislation and underrepresentation in the workplace, let’s take a look at what the Equal Pay Act actually is, and how it was formed.
What Exactly is the Equal Pay Act?
The Equal Pay Act had a turbulent history. During World War II, due to labor shortages, more women began to enter the workforce. As women began to make up more of the workforce, unions began to advocate for equal pay, and shortly after, the National War Labor Board endorsed the idea of “equal pay for equal work”. In 1945, Congress stepped forward and introduced the Women’s Equal Pay Act. The act contained the phrase “comparable work”, meaning equal pay for different jobs in the same workplace. Wages were to be determined based on merit and/or difficulty of the task. However, the phrase was the subject of heated debate, and as a result, the bill failed. Congress made several attempts to pass equal pay legislation throughout the 1950s, but they remained unsuccessful. By 1960, women made up 37% of the workforce, yet only earned an average of 59 cents on the dollar compared to men. Nevertheless, in 1961, both the executive and legislative branches pushed forward on equal pay legislation. Esther Peterson, a labor activist, was appointed as the head of the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor, which was in charge of issuing gender-issue labor laws. She urged President Kennedy to establish the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women to develop recommendations for achieving equality. Using the resources provided by the commission, Peterson was able to lead a successful campaign to bring the Equal Pay Act to Congress. While some sacrifices had to be made, such as scrapping the term, “comparable work”, in favor of the less controversial “equal work” (equal pay for the same job), Peterson was able to bring a groundbreaking law before Congress. Finally, after a series of negotiations with the business community, on June 10th, 1963, President John F. Kennedy ratified the Equal Pay Act. One of the first bills aiming to reduce gender discrimination in the workplace, the signing of the act, was a momentous occasion, acting as a beacon of hope for American women. Yet, what was considered groundbreaking in 1963, is somewhat outdated today. The Equal Pay Act is a flawed piece of legislation, for it allowed the private sector, and to a lesser level, the public sector to enjoy a multitude of loopholes when it came to applying pay equity in the workplace.
Problems With Current Legislation
The Equal Pay Act is ineffective. While the reforms introduced by this legislation were considered progressive in the 1960s, they’re hardly sufficient today. On average, women earn $0.79 cents to every dollar men earn. When the Equal Pay Act was first enacted, women earned $0.59 cents to the dollar. The progress made over 57 years amounts to just twenty cents. In fact, those numbers don’t even consider the massive pay gap that exists between subgroups. As of late, black women earn $0.63 for every dollar earned by their white male counterparts. Latina women earn $0.54 to every dollar, Native American women earn $0.57, and Asian women earn $0.79. Yet, the EPA was meant to prevent this very thing from happening. So what went wrong?
As I stated before, the Equal Pay Act allowed for a multitude of loopholes. These loopholes significantly reduce the law’s efficacy and are easily and frequently exploited by employers. The EPA prohibits sex-based wage discrimination and mandates “equal pay for the same job that requires an equal level of skill, effort, and responsibility”. However, this specific language allows for men to be paid a higher wage on the basis of seniority, merit, and productivity. The EPA then goes from specific to vague, citing that men can be paid a higher way on “a differential based on any factor over than sex”. This vague language makes it extremely difficult to prove wage discrimination and deters women from even filing a complaint or a lawsuit. Even if a woman was able to prove pay inequity, filed a lawsuit and won the lawsuit, the Equal Pay Act hardly punishes those in violation of the law. Employers are only forced to pay two years of retroactive pay (a delayed wage payment for work that was already performed and unfairly compensated at a lower rate than required). This is akin to a mere reprimand for large companies.
Any efforts made to strengthen or reinforce the Equal Pay Act have been curbed by partisan opposition. Progress made under the Obama administration has come under constant attack by the Trump administration. The current administration has delayed laws to promote greater pay transparency, collect pay data, and reinforce federal equal pay enforcement. An onslaught of partisan warfare has prevented two major federal proposals aiming to enact equal pay reform coming to fruition. The Paycheck Fairness Act and the Fair Pay Act would improve the way companies implement and adhere to pay transparency and strengthen federal enforcement tools that would ensure compliance with the law. While the Paycheck Fairness Act was reintroduced in January 2019 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and was passed by the House, it is still making its way through the Senate chambers. The Paycheck Fairness Act is a crucial piece of legislation, as it would help protect workers from retaliation from discussing pay, thereby increasing pay transparency, limit the use of salary history in making hiring decisions, close the legal loopholes that allowed employers to avoid liability, implement negotiation skills training, strengthen enforcement by requiring regular disaggregated pay data collection, and advance the resources available to plaintiffs who file sex-based wage discrimination claims under the Equal Pay Act. The Fair Pay Act, however, is yet to be reintroduced in the 116th Congress.
If any progress is to be made in achieving pay equity and gender equality, the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Fair Pay Act must be passed into law. In a span of 57 years, there has been an increase of a mere 20 cents in the amount women are paid to the dollar. This is unacceptable, and equal pay reform must be a priority, not just a passing thought.
Underrepresentation in the Workplace
Corporate America has failed to make any progress in improving workplace representation for women. Women are underrepresented in every role, position, and level. Women of color are the most underrepresented group of all, trailing behind white men, men of color, and white men. Why is this happening? It’s simply because the hiring and promotion practices used by the majority of American corporations put women at a disadvantage since the very beginning of their careers. While women are more likely to earn more bachelor’s degrees than men, they are less likely to be hired into entry-level jobs. The disparity increases when looking at managerial positions. Women are less likely to be hired into manager-level positions, and they are far less likely to be promoted into them. For every 100 men promoted to manager, 79 women are. As a result, men end up holding 68% of managerial positions, whereas women only hold 38%.
This underrepresentation leads to the “only” experience. One in five women reports that they are often the only women or one of the few women in the room at work. This is especially common in senior-level positions and women in technical roles. Around 40% of women have claimed to experience this. Women subject to the “only” experience have a much harder time in the workplace. More than 80% of these women have been subject to microaggressions in the workplace, compared to 64% of women overall. They are more likely to have their experience, abilities, and skill levels questioned or undermined, to be subjected to unprofessional, insulting, demeaning remarks, and to feel like they cannot talk about their personal lives at the workplace. They tend to be heavily scrutinized and are held to higher performance standards. Consequently, they often feel like they’re under immense pressure, are always on guard, and almost always feel left out.
The aforementioned hiring and promotion practices constantly reinforce this issue and make it extremely difficult for women to get adequate representation in the workplace.
How Can We Move Forward?
Knowing all of this, it’s now important to consider how we can move forward as a
society. In order to increase gender diversity in the workplace, companies must be held accountable for their hiring and promotion practices. Company policy must be subjected to oversight, and there must be sufficient data collected and reported to the federal government. This would ensure that hiring and promotion practices are fair. Companies must also make senior leaders and managers champions for diversity, as change will only occur if it’s taken seriously by a company’s senior management. Companies must dedicate themselves to fostering an inclusive and respectful workplace in which microaggressions toward any employees are strictly prohibited. Through their reformed hiring and promotion practices, companies must make the “only” experience rare, for it only contributes to the toxic work environment women are constantly subjected to.
In order to reduce the gender wage gap, the government must take action, and enforce both the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Fair Pay Act. If enforced, these laws would increase pay transparency, close legal loopholes, reform company hiring practices, and strengthen and mandate pay data collection. These provisions would greatly advance progress made to achieve gender equality in the workplace.
Gender discrimination in the workplace is an issue that must be solved. I encourage you to research, learn about, and talk about this issue. I have included a link to a petition you can sign to support the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act in the Senate. I urge you to sign this petition, as every signature, every effort, and every voice counts when fighting for change.
Petition Link:
https://www.change.org/p/u-s-house-of-representatives-support-the-paycheck-fairness-act?signed=true
Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/gender-equality-workplace-2015/422328/
https://www.nps.gov/articles/equal-pay-act.htm#:~:text=The%20Equal%20Pay%20Act%2C%20signed,di fferent%20salaries%20for%20similar%20work.
https://www.eeoc.gov/prohibited-employment-policiespractices https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/equal-pay-act-1963
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pao_v._Kleiner_Perkins https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/08/why-the-gender-pay-gap-still-exists-55-years-after-the-equal-pay-act.h tml
https://www.bustle.com/articles/154078-why-didnt-the-equal-pay-act-close-the-gender-pay-gap-50-years- later-america-still https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2019/03/26/467778/rhetoric-vs-reality-making-r eal-progress-equal-pay/ https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/gender-equality/women-in-the-workplace-2018#
Written by Rebecca from Brooklyn
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