Women of color, immigrant women and poor and working class women, to name a few – have worked outside the home…since the country’s beginning

• During WWII an unprecedented number of women entered the workforce, largely replacing male workers in war labor industry. Women were expected to exist in the “private” sphere, performing unpaid work. Since then, “the world of paid work has primarily existed as part of men’s “public” sphere in the American psyche.”
• Recognizing that women largely replaced male workers in war labor industry, the National War Labor Board in 1942 encouraged industry leaders to make “adjustments which [would] equalize wage or salary rates paid to females with the rates paid to males for comparable quality and quantity of work on the same or similar operation.”
•  More and more women entered the world of paid labor thereafter, and pay discrimination based on sex remained widespread and continued openly and unashamedly.
• On June 10, 1963, the Equal Pay Act was signed into law by president John F. Kennedy aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex.