WEBVTT - BONUS: The Pay Check, Episode 2 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:09.120 The first equal paid debate in the US started way 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:12.360 back in the eighteen sixties, and it ended in the 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:17.079 most American of ways, with a sex scandal. It was 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:21.040 a huge It was a huge scandal. That's Jessica Zappero. 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:24.520 She wrote This Grand Experiment, a book about when women 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.640 first went to work in the federal government in eighteen 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:31.080 sixty one, at the start of the Civil War. The 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:34.360 government is running out of money to pay federal workers. 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:38.559 It needs cheap labor. The Treasure of the US at 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:42.240 the time is Francis Spinner, and he has this great 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:46.320 idea higher women. When he went and inspected the treasury, 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:48.640 he found men performing tasks that he thought were better 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.800 suited to and more cheaply performed by women. Spinner is 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:55.520 trying to keep costs down, so he goes out and 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.600 offers women six hundred dollars a year for these jobs, 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.480 half of what the met are making. It's the first 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:05.760 time the government hires women, and it's a big opportunity. 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:11.080 He gets tons of applicants. At first, women are happy 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.560 to have the jobs, but even then d C was 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.880 an expensive place to live, and they soon start agitating 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:22.600 for more money. They petitioned Congress. They write letters to 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:25.320 newspapers like this one, which ran in the New York 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:30.240 Times in early eighteen sixty nine. Very few persons denied 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:33.200 a justice of the principle that equal work should command 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:35.919 equal pay without regard to the sex of the labor. 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:38.600 But it is one thing to acknowledge the right of 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:42.160 a principle, and quite another to practice it. Women are 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.520 known to be as good printers, teachers, telegraph clerks, etcetera. 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:49.680 As men, but fewer occupations are open to them. Their 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:53.640 necessity for employment is greater. Therefore their services can be 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.480 obtained for less. They say, we're doing the same job. 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:59.800 It's galling to watch men continue to get raises when 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:02.000 they're already earning so much and we're doing the exact 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:04.680 same job. Why are we different? What makes us to 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:09.240 differ from them? It's a reasonable question, and Congress doesn't 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:14.080 dismiss them. By eight seventy a handful of bills have 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:17.040 been introduced that would give women equal pay for equal work. 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:21.280 The US government had officially taken up the equal pay debate. 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.480 This is where that sex scandal comes in. It's the 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:32.360 first time men and women are working together, and while 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:36.519 there's some romance. A few relationships become public and it's 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:41.720 a huge deal. Newspapers cover it, politicians talk about it. 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.480 It's so notable that guide books to DC make sure 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.440 visitors know about it. It's impossible to tell how many 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.440 of these female clerks are pure women or how many impure. 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:55.400 The black sheep are greatly in the minority, but are 0:02:55.440 --> 0:03:03.280 still believed to be numerous. It's delicious gossip, and it 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:06.280 creates this idea that women working at the Treasury get 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.639 paid not to do clerical work, but to be sexually 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:14.000 available to men. Essentially, as far as some people are concerned, 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:19.839 this is government sanctioned prostitution. As Congress is debating equal pay, 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:22.800 one faction brings those up. You have been saying, we 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:26.000 shouldn't be employing women at all. They're all prostitutes. Why 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:27.960 are we even talking about this. We should just fire 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:31.040 all of them. None of the equal pay bills pass, 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:35.520 and it's partly because of this thinking. This is really significant. 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.040 It sets the standard for the next hundred fifty years. 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:43.680 This is how women enter the professional workforce from their 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.800 private companies also start to hire women to do clerical work, 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:50.320 and taking a queue from the government, they pay them less, 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:53.680 and perhaps had the federal government equally rewarded male and 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:56.600 female labor at this point, maybe private labor would have 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.440 paid them better as well. But instead Congress sent this 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:01.960 clear mess age that it was acceptable to treat women 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:05.360 as exploitable and marginal employees and to women themselves that 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:13.440 they were fundamentally inferior to men. When you look at 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:17.240 the world, you know what the population like. Where is 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.279 our place like? Where is our value? Wodn deserve people 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.599 for equal work? The gender lie helps to keep women 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.760 not on a pedestal but in a cage. First, have 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:30.680 you've done for the women according to the promises of 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.480 the platform. I'm sure we haven't done enough. And then 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.040 I'm glad that you reminded the other thing. Get a 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:40.960 power equalization between the sexes women? What do they want? 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:44.920 We want to end gender inequality, and to do this 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:50.000 we need everyone involved. The government's policy is that women 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:53.640 should get the same pay that men get or similar work. 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:59.560 And here are the all male nominees. Welcome back to 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:05.000 the pay Check. I'm Rebecca Greenfield. In this episode, we're 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:09.160 going to explain why that nineteenth century sex scandal still matters. 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:13.000 It established women in the workforce as cheap labor from 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:16.920 day one. A big part of the pay gap has 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:20.440 to do with what's called occupational sorting. This is the 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:27.279 idea that even today, women still do women's work their teachers, nurses, secretaries, 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:31.280 and those jobs pay less. This is what happens when 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:33.640 you have a hundred years of rules and laws that 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:36.800 dictate what women can and can't do, laws based on 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:40.120 the idea that women, because we can have babies, are 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:44.599 fundamentally different from men. Take those treasury secretaries. They just 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:48.440 wanted equal pay for equal work, but that question quickly 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.320 turned into a debate about whether women should really just 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:55.600 stay home and what would happen if we didn't. This 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.440 idea that women's biology and sexuality dictate what we should 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.760 and shouldn't do for work comes up again and again. 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.160 I asked my colleague Claire Sebteth to talk with me 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.159 about how this idea has played out over time and 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:17.640 what it has to do with the pay gap. Hi Clarik, 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.040 Hi Becca. Okay, so take me back to the sixties. 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:23.400 Why was it such a big deal for these women 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.800 to be working well? Up until this point, for the 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:30.160 most part, women weren't really working at least not for pay. 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.280 I mean, the sixties is the decade where slavery is abolished, 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:37.400 so many black women aren't even free. So when we 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:40.680 talk about women working for pay, we're largely talking about 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:43.960 white women. And maybe if they're single, they might be 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.520 a teacher or a governess. But for the most part, 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:49.440 they got married and stayed home and had kids. They 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:51.600 had a lot of kids. I think the average around 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:54.359 that time was about seven per mother. This was also 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:57.520 a time period, by the way, when women were quite 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.960 literally thought of as the weaker sex, the weaker sex. 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:04.000 What does that mean. It means essentially that people thought 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:08.320 women were not as intelligent or hard working or able 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:10.800 to do things as well as men. There's this really 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:13.320 famous quote from a brief by Lewis Brandeis and I 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:15.880 know it before he became a Supreme Court justice, and 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:18.840 he talks about this and these are his thoughts, but 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:22.240 they are representative of pretty much everyone's thought. Women are 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:25.680 fundamentally weaker than men in all that makes for endurance, 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:29.320 in muscular strength, in nervous energy, and he powers of 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:33.800 persistent attention and application. He also goes on to talk 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:36.080 later in this brief about how women shouldn't even hold 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:38.760 jobs that require them to stand for long hours because 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.520 their feet were delicate and their legs weren't quote good 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:48.320 sustaining columns. Okay, so women are just not fit to work. 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:52.000 They're either pregnant having children, or just like their bodies 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:53.760 aren't made for it. Yeah, or their feet are small. 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:58.000 But what if women need to make money? Obviously, even 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:00.320 at this time, even among the people who who hold 0:08:00.360 --> 0:08:03.160 these beliefs, they do know that women do sometimes have 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:06.000 to make money themselves. They could be widowed, their husbands 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:08.200 could be too sick, or you know, God forbid, they 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:12.640 could be single. So they started to pass these laws saying, Okay, 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:16.960 how do we fit these weaker beings into the workforce. 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:20.400 The laws that they passed are called protective laws. And 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:22.280 I don't know about you, but I had never heard 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:25.040 of this when I first started reading about it. So 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:28.480 I found a historian to explain it to me. I'm 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:33.240 Nancy Wallack. I'm research scholar and Arner History Department, and 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:39.080 I specialized in American history and especially in American women's history. 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:45.200 What were they protecting women from? It's always changing in 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:50.160 the progressive ye or of women. Reformers did advocate the 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.680 laws on the basis of of of women's work in 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:57.080 the in the home. They valued women's work as home maker, said, 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:02.000 as mothers and wife more than they of roles as workers. 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:05.240 You want to preserve women's health so that they can 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.640 have healthy children, which is good for society. That wasn't 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:14.840 essentially the legal the legal documents. There were a ton 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:20.000 of these laws, and they got really specific. Ohio, for instance, 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:23.199 had twenty two laws to keep women out of specific 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:29.520 forms of work, not just minds, but also elevator operators, 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:34.959 crossing guards. Why couldn't women be elevator operators? The idea 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.480 was that if a woman worked as an elevator operator 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:39.719 and she ran a man up to his apartment late 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:44.440 at night, something untoward might happen. So some places said 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:48.000 no elevator operators. In New York City actually said okay, 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:50.640 you can be an elevator operator, um, but women just 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.240 can't work past ten pm. So that also took care 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:55.720 of women in bars or restaurants or anything like that. 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.000 They were essentially protecting women from getting in situations where 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:00.840 something bad might have up into them. But at the 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:04.000 same time they were also kind of protecting men from 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.800 these wanton women who would be a late night elevator operators. 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:11.520 We just can't conceive of women outside of their sexuality. Basically, 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:14.360 they're either at home having babies or outside having sex. 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.720 They can't just be an elevator operator doing their job. No, 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:22.400 absolutely not. How do these laws play into what women earn? 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:25.400 You have all these women who do need money, they 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.400 need to work, but you have this limited list of 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:31.040 jobs that they can hold. So you essentially get this 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.280 supply and demand problem. You have way more women wanting 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:38.240 to work than they can. If you're an employer, that's 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:40.280 great for you because you don't have to pay them 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:41.920 that much because there's always going to be some other 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:45.600 woman willing to accept the lower pay. She goes through 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:49.679 the mill of New York eight hundred employment funerals. She 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:52.360 learns that although lots of jobs are listed, there are 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.560 ten applicants for each one, girls with city references and 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:59.400 city experience. But are you sure you're han't got something 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:06.679 for me? We don't take any series. Good? What about race? 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.360 This is all happening just a few decades after slavery 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:13.040 is abolished, right, Yeah, so black people were limited in 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.400 the jobs they can and cannot do by law. It 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:18.079 was even more explicit and more segregated than law is 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:21.280 created for women. And you essentially have the economy divided 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:23.640 up into these, you know, jobs that are appropriate for 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.680 white men, jobs that are appropriate for black men, white women, 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:31.160 black women. And this occupational sorting that we have now 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:34.240 you can trace it back to this time period where 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:37.120 even today, black women are twice as likely as white 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.520 women to hold service industry jobs, right because back then 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:43.480 they weren't even allowed to hold the better paying jobs. 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:46.679 And that was true for anybody who wasn't white. So 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.160 that's kind of where we are. And things only really 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:53.760 start to change because they have to our Gundry and Berrol. 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.480 The women of America rallied to the support of the 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.520 So I know about World War Two, men enter the 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:03.559 workforce in large numbers, and we have Rosie the Riveter 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:06.520 and women going into factories. Yeah, and it's not that 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:08.319 we have Rosie the Riveter. We have two and a 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.839 half million Rosie the Riveters. And here in this almost 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.440 the last rate industry we thought could be handled only 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:21.520 by men, these mothers, wives and sweethearts came to stand 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.480 shoulder to shoulder with them in almost every capacity. Women 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:29.160 entered the labor force in huge numbers in a way 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:32.400 that they never had before, and they were holding jobs 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:37.160 that had previously, because of these laws, been thought inappropriate 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:40.640 for them. Were they getting paid equally at that time? 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:44.840 It's interesting because if you're a factory owner and all 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:47.400 your workers go off to war and you start hiring 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:51.040 women and paying them less. When your workers come back 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:53.440 from more, are you going to pay them their old 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:55.400 wages that are higher or are you going to stick 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:58.199 with the lower wages you've been paying women. So labor 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:02.880 unions actually started lobbying for equal pay less because they 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:06.040 were concerned about women. Then they were concerned about the 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:09.360 men returning from war getting their old wages. Is this 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.040 all women? No, it's not all women. This was largely 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:17.880 just for white women. Technically, President Roosevelt outlawed racial discrimination 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:23.439 in the war industry, but it was pretty inconsistent, and 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:26.120 things really only opened up for black people towards the 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:28.400 end of the war when they're just really weren't enough 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:32.000 white people to fill all the jobs. What happens when 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:34.800 the men come back. Women have shown what they could 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:37.840 do in war, and now that the fighting is over, 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:42.120 women intend to show the world what they can do 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:47.439 in peace. When the men come back, the protective laws 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:51.360 come back. Wait, the protective laws came back. Yeah, they 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.080 actually had been in place the whole time. They just 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:56.880 were usually written with this little clause saying, you know, 0:13:57.000 --> 0:13:58.960 in case of emergency, we don't have to do this. 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.040 And the world ward who was definitely an emergency. So 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:06.000 men come back. The women get pushed out of the workforce. Also, 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:09.600 very quickly you end up going from you know, of 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:13.880 auto industry workers in were women and two years later 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.760 it's eight percent. It's like boom, So you get from 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:20.840 Rosie the riveter to leave it to Beaver. Essentially, when 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:24.560 do the protective laws go away? They go away when 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:27.520 two things happen. The first is a smaller step, it 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:31.600 seems really big at the time. The Democratic track Boom 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:35.000 in which you ran, promises to work for if they 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:38.480 right for women and footing equal pay. I must say 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.080 I am a strong believer in equal pay, here for 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:45.120 equal work, and I think that we are to work 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:50.800 do better than we're doing in President Kennedy signs the 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:54.240 Equal Pay Act, which means that a woman holding any 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:56.160 job has to be paid the same as a man. 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.600 But that just means of a job that she's already holding. 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.160 It doesn't mean that you have to allow her to 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:06.880 hold any job whatsoever. That happens because of the Civil 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:10.320 Rights Act. And actually it sort of happens by accident, 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:13.280 which is something that has sort of been lost to history, 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:16.840 but I talked to Nancy about it. The accident was 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:20.320 the addition of sex to Title seven of the nine 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:25.960 Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act was protecting people 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:29.160 against racial discrimination, and Title seven of the Civil Rights 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:34.000 Act as racial discrimination at work. First, at least a decade, 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:39.920 UH southern congressman had been trying to add a provision 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:46.080 about sex too civil Rights Acts in order to UH 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:49.240 topple the Acts. They would say, okay, well, if you 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:52.680 want us to treat everyone, you know, equally according to race, 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:55.920 what if we treat women equally too, And people would say, well, 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:58.320 that's ridiculous, and so then all the bills would just die. 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:02.760 So for this comes up again, a Virginia congressman does 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.320 the same thing that had worked in the past, but 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.600 this time lawmakers on the other side called this bluff. 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.400 They were like, fine, we'll treat women equally. So the 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:13.480 word sex gets added to the Civil Rights Act, the 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.480 law passes, and then boom, Women can, in theory anyway, 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:20.240 hold any job that they want to. So we end 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:24.200 a discrimination basically on a dare Yeah, And when you 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.000 think about it, essentially that means we passed this law, 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:31.640 this very big law, changing something quite fundamental in our economy, 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:35.520 without really believing all the stuff behind it. So for 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:38.880 the next fifty years we've essentially been fighting about what 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:50.320 that means. The Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:54.040 Act were really important. Women are no longer barred from 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:57.400 working in the most lucrative fields, and once we get 0:16:57.440 --> 0:16:59.800 to those fields, we're supposed to get equal pay for 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:03.280 that work. Those two pieces of legislation did a lot 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:05.680 to bring women's pay more in line with what men 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:14.000 were earning. But it doesn't end there because now businesses 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:16.560 have to comply with the laws, and in a lot 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:18.960 of cases that means they have to change the way 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:22.600 they operate, and they don't like that. They don't want 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:24.760 to be told who they can or can't hire and 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:28.080 how much they have to pay them or not pay them. 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:30.480 They want the flexibility to do whatever they think will 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:34.360 make them the most money. And companies argue, literally, are 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.000 you because they get sued and defend themselves in court 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:41.520 that they have business reasons for discriminating. For example, in 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:43.720 the late nineteen sixties, it was pretty common for the 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:47.399 airlines to require flight attendants to be female and single. 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.800 When they got married, they got fired. When United Airlines 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:55.200 got sued, the airline defended its practice in court by 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:59.679 saying the irregularity inherent and stewardess as work schedules, was 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:03.760 in compatible with the women's role in married life. Businesses 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:06.600 push and push against the constraints of the Civil Rights Act, 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:13.159 and they haven't stopped, but sometimes women push back. My 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:17.120 name is Lily led Better and a lis in Jacksonville, Alabama. 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:21.800 In two thousand nine, right after Barack Obama took office, 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:25.359 he signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It was 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.199 the first piece of legislation he signed, and it closed 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:31.359 a legal technicality that companies you to work around with 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:34.840 the Civil Rights Act. Claire talked to Lily about what 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.280 it was like to win on the facts and lose 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:46.919 on a technicality. Today, Lily is eighty years old, but 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:48.960 in her younger years she worked at a good Year 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:52.600 tire plan in gads In, Alabama for twenty years. She 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:56.000 made tires mainly the first job I had. I had 0:18:56.040 --> 0:19:02.080 three tubers, one produced trader or powers. That meant having 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:06.680 the right former, having the right rubber, the rock chemicals. 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.680 She liked good year. She had a four oh one K. 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:12.600 She had benefits, She got time and a half when 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:16.000 she worked over time. She'd worked her way up to 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:19.200 manager and was closing out on a retirement which would 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.679 come with a pension. Then one day at work, someone's 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:26.080 up to paper into her employee mailbox. To this day, 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:28.520 she has no idea who wrote it. And it had 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:32.919 four names, it had had three man In mind, somebody 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:37.239 has told me what all of our base pay is. 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:41.720 Those names on the paper were all managers, just like Lily, 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.280 but she was making up to forty less than them. 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:50.240 Lily thought about those numbers, social Security, her pension. They 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:53.399 were all tied to her salary. I got home, I 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:56.480 told my husband, I said I have to go to Birmingham, 0:19:56.520 --> 0:19:59.800 Alabama and follow a charge with an equal employma combition 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.840 because this is not right. And he said, well, what 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:06.960 time you want to leave. Lily found a lawyer and 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.800 in two thousand three they went to trial. She had 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:13.560 a strong case and she won They had a four 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:17.040 by eight wild board drawed off with all of the 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.480 male's names and my name in the tower room where 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:25.160 I worked, in our starting pay and our ending pay, 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:27.600 all the three the years. And I mean, you could 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:30.800 just sit there and study those numbers, and you knew, 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:36.000 you knew even the lowest rated man. There was one 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:38.760 guy rated a little lower than me, but man, his 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:43.240 salary was twice mine. The jury awarded Lily three point 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:46.720 eight million dollars. The judge reduced it to three hundred 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:49.960 sixty thousand, but it was obvious to everyone that Lily 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:52.040 hadn't been paid as much as the men who held 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:55.200 the same job for accompanying the size of goodyear. Three 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:58.680 sixty thousand wasn't a lot of money, but they didn't 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:01.320 want to pay, and they didn't think they should have to, 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:05.600 the way the Civil Rights Act worked, an employee had 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:08.040 a hundred eighty days to file a lawsuit if they'd 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:12.360 been discriminated against. Lily's team argued that the hundred eighty 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.040 days started when she learned she was being paid unfairly, 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:18.600 when she got that slip of paper. The company argued, no, 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:22.720 the act of discrimination began with her first unequal paycheck, 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:26.160 and those a hundred and eighty days had long since expired. 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:31.200 Goodyear appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Other 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:34.800 businesses wanted them to win, and a supporting brief the 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:37.520 US Chamber of Commerce said it wasn't fair to businesses 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:40.760 if that one eighty day period could last until someone 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:44.119 like Lily found out. They called it an unwarranted and 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:50.000 excessive burden unemployers. The judges ruled five to four in 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:54.760 favor of Goodyear. Lily lost. In a rare move. Justice 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:57.920 Ruth Wader Ginsburg read her dissenting opinion allowed in court 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:03.560 in our of you does not comprehend or is indifferent 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:08.720 to the insidious way in which women can be victims 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:13.159 of pay discrimination. This was not the intent of the 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:16.680 Civil Rights Actinsburg pointed out, But the fact remained that 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:20.600 Lily had lost. She never got a dime. Two years later, 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:23.720 Congress passed the Lily led Better Fair Pay Act. That 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:28.120 day period during which people can sue now it resets 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:32.560 with every unequal paycheck. Since then, countless women have filed 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:36.080 suit under the law. A lot of people have found 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:37.919 on that a lot of people have gotten money, and 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:45.240 I'll lock it Ultimately, equal pay isn't just an economic 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:48.440 issue for millions of Americans and their families. It's a 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:51.080 question of who we are and whether we're truly living 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:54.000 up to our fundamental ideals. That is what Lily led 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:57.000 Better challenged us to do, and today I signed this 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:00.000 bill not just in her honor, but in the honor 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:06.720 of those who came before. All these laws try to 0:23:06.800 --> 0:23:10.239 fix the same problem. Men and women have never been 0:23:10.320 --> 0:23:13.240 valued the same way in the labor market, Not since 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.880 Francis Spinner hired those secretaries because he could pay them less. 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:22.479 Women's work has always been worthless. We also haven't really 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:25.960 gotten over that sex scandal. The idea that women are 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:28.679 sirens in a mixed workplace is always in danger of 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:33.639 becoming a whorehouse. That sounds ridiculous today, or does it? 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:39.840 The Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, he 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:42.720 won't eat lunch alone with a woman that isn't his wife. 0:23:43.400 --> 0:23:46.000 He says, it's part of a religious practice that asks 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:50.159 men to avoid even the possible appearance of impropriety. This 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:55.240 attitude is surprisingly common. Female staffers in Congress say plenty 0:23:55.240 --> 0:24:00.000 of male representatives have similar policies or practices on college campus, 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:03.680 as some male professors avoid closed door meetings with female students. 0:24:04.400 --> 0:24:07.960 Practices like these have real consequences for women's careers and 0:24:08.000 --> 0:24:11.680 their earning power. They also suggest that women just by 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:17.720 being women create problems for everyone. Next week on The Paycheck, 0:24:17.800 --> 0:24:20.000 we're going to hear from people who don't believe in 0:24:20.040 --> 0:24:23.000 the pay gap at all, and if there is a 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:27.040 pay gap, they know who's to blame. Um. Women don't 0:24:27.080 --> 0:24:30.360 negotiate as much as men do, and that could explain it. 0:24:30.560 --> 0:24:33.119 I think we're a little bit more reserved when it 0:24:33.119 --> 0:24:35.000 comes to fighting for what we want. I think we're 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:37.879