A Paycheck and a Pressure Cooker

Two landmark pieces of legislation in the early 1960s promised American women a long-overdue seat at the workplace table. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 required that men and women receive equal compensation for equal work. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, passed the following year, went even further, prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, or sex. On paper, these were victories. They announced that women had every right to be in the boardroom, on the factory floor, and behind the desk, earning just as much pay as their male counterparts.
But the reality at home revealed a different story. While Congress was passing laws to open workplace doors for women, American culture was still telling them their place was in the kitchen, the laundry room, and the nursery. The belief that women belonged at home while men earned the paycheck never vanished — it simply wove itself into workplace policy and everyday practice. The gender wage gap didn’t persist because the law was ignored. It persisted because while Congress could swiftly change the law, it could not legislate the shift of deeply embedded cultural norms. That would take time.

Legal Paper, Cultural Glue

The Equal Pay Act was a response to decades of women’s labor being systematically undervalued. During both World Wars, women had proven themselves in factories and offices, stepping into roles traditionally held by men. But when peace brought retreat during the postwar years and women were coerced back into the home, women’s contributions outside the domestic sphere were quickly discarded and forgotten. By the time the law passed in 1963, it was framed as a matter of simple fairness: if a woman did the same job as a man, she should earn the same wage. Sounds great, except the law came with a major loophole. Employers could still justify pay differences based on “any factor other than sex,” a phrase so vague and elastic it became a catch-all defense. Prior military service, longer tenure, even so-called “leadership qualities” could all be cited to explain why a man earned more, even when a woman did identical work.
The following year, Title VII added muscle to anti-discrimination law, making it illegal to consider sex when hiring, firing, or promoting. But enforcement was slow and half-hearted at best. The newly formed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was charged with its enforcement but was underfunded and overwhelmed. In its early years, the agency often dismissed sex discrimination as a private matter or a simple misunderstanding. It wasn’t until later, after sustained pressure from women’s rights groups that the EEOC begin to treat sex discrimination as a serious legal concern.
Even then, the letter of the law was one thing, but the unwritten rules of cultural lag were another. Employers viewed women as temporary workers who would likely marry, have children, and leave the job, so they assigned them to lower-paying, so-called “feminine” positions like secretaries, assistants, and clerks. Men were tracked for promotion; women were tracked for attrition. The problem wasn’t just policy — it was a belief system.

The Housework Hurdle

While the Equal Pay Act and Title VII focused on public life, women remained burdened by private obligations. No law required men to wash dishes, and the culture certainly did not pressure them to change diapers or help with homework. And few employers acknowledged that after a day on the clock, many women faced another full shift at home. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild later coined a name for it: the second shift. It referred to the unpaid labor of cooking, cleaning, caregiving, and emotional management that largely fell to women who were also working full-time jobs. This extra burden wasn’t just exhausting; it had real consequences. It shaped the kinds of jobs women could take, the hours they could work, and the way employers viewed their commitment. A man who stayed late was seen as dedicated. A woman who left on time to pick up her child was seen as distracted. The result was a persistent gap in pay, promotions, and perceived potential — one that no piece of legislation could fully close.
This division of labor wasn’t just a private arrangement; it was a political reality. In the absence of universal childcare, paid family leave, or flexible work arrangements, women had to bend their professional lives around their domestic ones. That meant fewer paid working hours, slower promotions, and lower pay. Employers justified pay inequity by claiming that women “chose” lower-paying paths, conveniently ignoring the structural limits imposed on those choices and exploiting women for cheap labor. Women were exhausted, frustrated, and resentful and many decided it was time to organize the fight.

Laundry Lists and Legal Briefs

The fight for equal pay wasn’t only waged in courtrooms — it happened in kitchens, union halls, and office break rooms. Women organized to hold employers accountable and push for broader reforms. The National Organization for Women (NOW), founded in 1966, lobbied the EEOC to take sex discrimination seriously and filed lawsuits against major corporations. Women in clerical roles, retail, and education all joined forces to demand reclassification of their jobs and professional recognition of their worth.
Unfortunately, even when lawsuits succeeded, broader change was slow. A woman might win her case, only to find herself iced out among colleagues. New work policies might be put in place, only to be ignored or quietly undermined by day-to-day culture. And when women did advance in male-dominated fields, they were often expected to prove themselves twice over — competent at work, and undistracted by their obligations at home.
For women of color, the burden was even heavier. Black women, for example, had always worked — often in undervalued domestic and agricultural labor. When they entered white-collar professions, they faced both racial and gender bias. Their exclusion was not just about being women in a man’s world — it was also about being outsiders in a system built for white people.

Still Cleaning Up

The Equal Pay Act and Title VII were necessary improvements, but not sufficient, by far. They laid the groundwork for change but didn’t finish the job. As long as the culture continued to expect women to do double duty — full-time at work and full-time at home — a level playing field with equal opportunities would remain out of reach. Until the burdens of care are shared, supported, and seen as everyone’s responsibility, the promise of equal pay would remain just that: a promise, not a reality.

Notes
Equal Pay Act of 1963, Pub. L. No. 88–38, 77 Stat. 56 (1963).
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241 (1964).
David Neumark, “The Effects of the Equal Pay Act of 1963,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 29, no. 4 (2015): 129–40.
Gillian Thomas, Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women’s Lives at Work (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016), 25–27.
Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 302–305.
Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung, The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking Penguin, 1989).
Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 114–118.
National Committee on Pay Equity, “The Wage Gap Over Time,” accessed July 24, 2025, https://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html.