The wage gap between men and women in the United States has narrowed slowly, but it has not closed. Women working full-time, year-round still earn around 84 cents for every dollar men earn, according to the most recent federal data. Some of that gap reflects job choice, hours worked, and experience. Some of it is unlawful pay discrimination under a 62-year-old statute. The Equal Pay Act is one of the oldest federal employment laws still on the books, and it gets more enforcement attention today than it has in decades. HR teams that run a pay equity analysis once a year catch most problems before the EEOC does.
What the Law Requires The Equal Pay Act prohibits paying employees of one sex less than employees of the opposite sex for equal work on jobs requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility, performed under similar working conditions, in the same establishment. All four criteria must match for the pay comparison to apply.
"Equal" does not mean identical. Courts look at the job's actual content, not the title. A lead technician and a senior technician doing substantially the same work are comparable, even if the titles differ.
The Four Statutory Defenses Employers can justify a pay difference under four defenses: a seniority system, a merit system, a system that measures earnings by quantity or quality of production, or any factor other than sex. The fourth defense is the broadest and the most litigated.
Does a Salary History Justify a Pay Gap? Fewer and fewer states allow it. California, New York, Washington, Colorado, and a growing list of others prohibit employers from relying on prior pay to set starting salary. The Ninth Circuit has also held that salary history alone is not a valid "factor other than sex" defense under federal law.
How Enforcement Works An employee can file an EPA claim directly in court without first going to the EEOC, which makes EPA claims faster than Title VII claims. The statute of limitations is two years for ordinary violations and three years for willful ones. Remedies include back pay, liquidated damages equal to the back pay, and attorney's fees.
The EEOC enforces the EPA alongside Title VII. Claims often get filed together. Review the EEOC's compensation discrimination guidance for the current enforcement stance.
Running an Equal Pay Act Audit That Holds Up Pull your compensation data annually and analyze it by gender within job groups of comparable work, not by job title. Use a regression to control for legitimate factors like experience, tenure, and location. Flag any unexplained gap above 5 percent for review.
Document the analysis and the corrective actions you take. When a gap reflects a historical practice you've since corrected, your documentation protects you from the argument that the gap was ongoing. Also pay attention to compa-ratio drift within pay bands, which is often where unintentional gaps start. Review compensation decisions at hire, promotion, and market adjustment. Those are the three moments that set up the next year's gap or close the previous one.
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