Fair Pay Act

On Thursday pay discrimination for women takes center stage in the nation’s capitol. In an effort to recover from the substantial defeat in the Supreme Court last spring, feminist advocates are pushing the “Fair Pay Restoration Act” in a Senate hearing this week.

The protection for women in the workplace stems from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which granted women the right to sue for discrimination but imposed strict limits. Last spring the Supreme Court interpreted those limits to mean that women have 180 days to file a pay discrimination complaint from the time that the pay discrimination began. According to today’s Supreme Court, women would have to recognize discrimination and file a complaint within about 6 months of starting a new job.

Women in this country have always suffered from restrictive treatment from the law when it comes to workplace equity.

During the Reagan administration, civil rights advocates complained that many important enforcement mechanisms of the 1964 Civil Rights Act were gutted. When Reagan termed out of office in 1989, a major effort picked up steam to restore civil rights protections to their previous level of force.

Among the many struggles during this period was the demand by feminists to eliminate the restrictions put on enforcing equity in the workplace, such as the low limit on the damages that could be collected for employment discrimination based on gender bias. I was in Washington for some of these debates, when some insiders in the civil rights movement complained that the feminists were slowing down an important opportunity to make progress in civil rights.

In the end, the 1991 Civil Rights Restoration Act bypassed relief for women and instead set up the “Glass Ceiling Commission” with the charge to investigate whether or not workplace discrimination against women merited more robust protection. Elizabeth Dole headed up that commission (followed by a revolving door of commission leaders), which many years later reported on deep and systemic bias and discrimination against women in the workplace.

The Commission findings only confirmed what was already known: workplace gender bias was deep and widespread. Among other findings, the commission reported that 97% of senior managers at the nation’s largest corporations were white and male, and this was the result of a deeply held gender bias.

Despite the findings of the commission, the political moment for strengthening civil rights protections seemed to have passed. Last year the Supreme Court awakened the sleeping giant with its decision to deny reparations for a clear pay discrimination case. Let’s hope Senate leaders today move the Fair Pay Restoration Act one step closer to reality.