A year of law, not yet of results
The workplace changes of 1967 were mostly legal and organisational. By then, three pieces of the framework existed: the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a new federal agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In October 1967 a presidential order added another. Enforcement was uneven, and daily life at work changed more slowly than the rules did.
The Equal Pay Act, 1963
President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in June 1963. It required employers covered by the federal wage law to pay men and women the same for equal work performed under similar conditions in the same establishment. At the time, women’s average earnings were well below men’s; a figure of roughly 60 cents for each dollar earned by men is often cited for those years, though measures differ.
The original law had limits. It did not cover many executive, administrative and professional employees, and it applied only to equal work, so it did little about jobs that were segregated by sex. Coverage was widened in 1972.
Title VII and the sex amendment
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, national origin and sex. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed in July 1964 and its employment provisions took effect a year later. Sex was added during House debate by an amendment offered by Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia, an opponent of the bill. Historians still disagree over his motives, and some see it as a tactic to sink the bill, while others note that he had long been in touch with women’s rights advocates. Whatever the intention, it passed and became law.
The new law was a break from older practice. Employers had openly kept separate job categories for men and women, forced women out on marriage or pregnancy, and set different pay scales. Airlines, for example, commonly fired stewardesses when they married or reached a certain age. Challenges to those rules began in the mid-1960s and continued for years.
The EEOC and its early reluctance
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began work in 1965. Its main attention at first was racial discrimination, and many women felt that complaints about sex discrimination were treated as less serious. Its early officials were reported to be uncertain about the sex provision, and this contributed to frustration among women’s advocates.
That frustration was one reason for the founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966. A group of women, including Betty Friedan, met in Washington in June 1966 at a conference of state commissions on the status of women, and decided that an independent organisation was needed. NOW was formally launched later that year. Its statement of purpose called for full participation of women in American society, and one of its first aims was to press the EEOC to enforce the sex provision. Over the next few years, NOW and others used complaints and litigation to push on issues such as sex-segregated job advertisements and airline rules.
Executive Order 11375, October 1967
On 13 October 1967, President Johnson signed Executive Order 11375. It amended an earlier order, 11246 of 1965, which had banned discrimination by federal contractors on grounds of race, colour, religion and national origin. The new order added sex to the list. It took effect in October 1968.
This mattered because the federal government bought goods and services from a large number of companies and universities. Contractors could be required to take steps to avoid discrimination, and later regulations developed detailed requirements. The order did not by itself create new rights in court, but it extended federal expectations to a large part of the economy.
What work looked like in 1967
Women were an increasing share of the labour force, but they were concentrated in a limited range of jobs: clerical work, teaching, nursing, retail and light manufacturing. Few held senior management roles or worked in professions like law and medicine, where they were a small minority. Job advertisements were often divided into men’s and women’s columns, and many employers regarded women as temporary workers who would leave to raise families.
Wages in the lowest-paid jobs were also tied to the minimum wage, which rose in February 1967, although some jobs where women predominated were not covered by it at the time. The wider anti-poverty efforts of the War on Poverty touched women both as workers and as heads of households.
Where it went next
The following years saw more litigation, stronger EEOC guidelines and amendments to the law. The 1972 education law and a stronger EEOC enforcement role came later, so 1967 should be viewed as the stage when the framework existed but enforcement was beginning. Outcomes were uncertain, and progress on pay and promotion was gradual, as the labour statistics of later decades show.