Norton Introduces Fair Pay Act on National Equal Pay Day

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a former chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), today introduced the Fair Pay Act of 2019, which builds on her work enforcing the 1963 Equal Pay Act at the EEOC. Norton introduced her bill on National Equal Pay Day, which marks the day of the year a woman, on average, must work to earn what a man earned last year. The Fair Pay Act would help eliminate the gender wage gap by requiring men and women doing comparable work to be paid comparable wages and builds on the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by allowing women to prove that some or all of a wage disparity is gender-based in jobs comparable, but not identical, to male-dominated jobs. If a woman, for example, is an emergency services operator, a female-dominated profession, she should not be paid less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated profession, simply because each of these jobs has been dominated by one sex. If a woman is a social worker, a traditionally female occupation, she should not earn less than a probation officer, a traditionally male job, simply because of the gender associated with each of these jobs.

"National Equal Pay Day is the stark reminder the nation needs of the challenges facing American women, who do not earn the same wages as their male counterparts," Norton said. "It's bad enough that women do not get equal pay for equal work. While pursuing this long overdue goal, we must at the same time take on the most entrenched disparity – jobs that are comparable in skill, effort, and responsibility, but pay less because these jobs are performed largely by women."

The introduction of the Fair Pay Act follows House passage last week of Norton's Pay Equity for All Act, which prohibits employers from asking job applicants about their salary history. It was Norton's third bill in three months that passed the House.