Thus with some urgency we are here today reiterating our support of this badly needed remedy. The discrimination in pay that women suffer at administrative, and executive and professional levels continues, as our previous statistics indicate.

The extension of the equal pay act to these positions would be very important because it would encompass those individuals who have the same background, experience, and education but make different wages. Here it is not so much a problem of different jobs, of being secretaries rather than managers, but of receiving different pay based on

sex.

At present title VII, section 703 (a) (1), of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination in hiring, discharging, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, including that of compensation.

However, the EEOC, which is burdened with administering title VII has an overload of casework. Moreover, the EEOC has very little power, a situation we have sought to remedy by testifying in support of legislative efforts to grant the EEOC the right to issue judicially enforceable cease-and-desist orders, to back up its findings of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, which currently it does not have.

The EEOC's authority is limited to conciliation efforts.

On the other hand the Equal Pay Act is administered by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. This agency is generally able to obtain compliance.

If there is a refusal to comply or deliberate violation of the law, the Secretary of Labor may obtain a court injunction to restrain continued violation or withholding of back wages legally due.

The Secretary of Labor may also bring suit for the back wages upon written request of an aggrieved employee. Also important is the fact that complaints are treated in strict confidence and unless court action is necessary, the name of the aggrieved party is not revealed, whereas under the protection of title VII such anonymity is impossible.

Indeed the strength and effectiveness of enforcement proceedings under the Fair Labor Standards Act was one of the compelling reasons for BPW's support for attaching the equal pay bill to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Finally, although not included in the legislation at hand, we should like to indicate our support for the extension of child care facilities throughout our Nation.

We also recommended an increased child care deduction (an increase in the amount of the deduction as well as the income level allowed for taking the deduction) for those who would hire someone or otherwise provide for care for their children while both parents work.

We do not consider this special legislation for women, but for families. Although the mother traditionally has been the one to stay home, the responsibility for child care certainly belongs to both of the parents, especially when both are contributing to the family income.

Equal employment opportunity is not and cannot be a reality unless this need for various kinds of improvement in the types of child care and the ability of families to use these plans are forthcoming.

These measures are very specific legislative remedies for particular problems of discrimination affecting American women today.

They will not solve all our problems, but we believe they will help to balance the scale of justice and to provide legal remedies for present inequities.

Thank you.

(The documents referred to follow :)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MRS. MYRA RUTH HARMON, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL FEDERATION OF BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL WOMEN'S CLUBS, INC.

Madam Chairman: The National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, Inc. is honored to be here today to testify in support of H.R. 16098, specifically in support of Section 805 which would include women among those who shall not be excluded from participation in or denied the benefits of any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance; remove the educational exemption allowed by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act regarding employment discrimination; include sexual discrimination among the kinds of discrimination now analyzed by the Cvil Rights Commssion, and extend the Equal Pay provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act to administrative, executive and professional positions.

We would like today to address our remarks in support of each of these proposals, but to preface these with some general statements concerning the relevance of our Federation's testifying on these matters, as well as the ramifications of discrimination by sex in our society, particularly the economic effects thereof.

Mrs. Green, our organization of 180,000 members, spread throughout the United States, in every state and in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, includes working women from all kinds of occupations and professions whether lawyers, clerks, saleswomen, secretaries, managers, or Ph. D's. The key element uniting all is their interest in and concern for the specific problems and needs they experience as working women. As working women we are vitally interested in and offer our total support for those legislative goals contained in Section 805 of H.R. 16098. Before concentrating specifically on those objectives we would like to consider some general statistics regarding working

women.

Let us look briefly at the changes that have occurred in the work scene and for working women since 1920, just after our national federation was founded and women had secured the right to vote.

In 1920 the life expectancy of a baby girl was 55 years, today it is 74 years. Today, out of every 100 girls who are 17 years old, 78 are graduating from high school, whereas in 1920 there were only 20. Today, for every 100 women 21 years old, there are 19 graduating from college compared to two out of every 100 in 1920. Today 43 percent of all women are in the labor force, which is 20 percent more than in 1920. The average woman worker today is married and 39 years old, whereas in 1920 she was single and 28 years old.1

Since 1940 American women have been responsible for the major share in the growth of the labor force. Their representation in the labor force has risen from 14 to almost % of all workers. In 1900 women were only 18 percent of all workers; in 1940, 25 percent; today, 37 percent. In fact the number of women in the civilian labor force increased by 75 percent between 1947 and 1968, while the number of men rose only 16 percent."

In proportion to their increasing participation in the growth of the economy, American women are certainly not receiving a fair share. On the contrary, this spring the U.S. Department of Labor issued a very significant "Fact Sheet on the Earnings Gap" which describes in detail the variations in wages between men and women. A copy of the full Fact Sheet is appended to our statement, but let me simply highlight some of the conclusions therefrom.

A comparison of the median wage or salary incomes of women and men who worked full time year round between 1955 and 1968 reveals not only that incomes of women are considerably less than those of men but also that the gap has widened in recent years. In 1955 for example, women's median wage or salary income of $2,719 was 64 percent of the $4,252 received by men. In 1968

1 Changing Patterns of Women's Lives, Women's Bureau, Wage and Labor Standards Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, 1970. 2 1969 Handbook on Women Workers, Bulletin 294, Women's Bureau, Wage and Labor Standards Administration, U.S. Department of Labor (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1969), pp. 5, 3, 9, 15.

50-147-71-pt. 1- 2

women's median earnings of $4,457 was only 58 percent of the $7,664 received by men.

The type of occupation does not make too much difference. In 1968, this same report shows that women professional and technical workers had a median wage of $6,691 compared to $10,151 for men. Women clerical workers, sales workers, operatives, and service workers all had an income of between 55 and 65.9 percent of what men received in the same categories.

This is happening now, today, when more women than ever work; when women clearly work to provide an adequate standard of living for themselves, their families and their other dependents.

The radical difference in wages for men and women today is revealed also by the fact that only 8 percent of men full time year round workers in 1968 earned less than $3,000 while there were 20 percent of the women at the pay level; and that 60 percent of the women but only 20 percent of the men earned less than $5,000. At the other end of the scale, only 3 percent of the women but 28 percent of the men had earnings of $10,000 or more.3

These figures clearly reveal that women are discriminated against in the work force. They do not show how or why.

Such statistics do not necessarily and invariably indicate that women are receiving unequal pay for equal work. That is certainly part of the story. But in many cases the lower incomes are the result of the fact that women are more likely than men to be employed in low-skilled, low-paying jobs. You need only look around you to convince you of this fact, but the Report on the Earnings Gap goes on to conclude that women are much less likely than men to be associate or full professors in institutions of higher education; that women in the technical field are usually in the lowest category of draftsman or engineering technician ; that women are usually Class B and men the higher paid Class A accounting clerks in the clerical field; that women in cotton textile manufacturing are usually the battery hands, spinners and yarn winders (lower paying jobs); while men are loom fixers, maintenance machinists, and card grinders (the better paying jobs). As Dr. Cynthia Epstein notes: ". . . no matter what sphere of work women are hired for or selected, like sediment in a wine bottle they seem to settle to the bottom."

In some fields women have actually lost ground, as the U.S. News and World Report pointed out last September. No woman has served in a President's Cabinet since 1955. The two houses of Congress now have a total of only 11 women compared with 17 in 1960. Compared to some European countries, American women are way behind. Women constitute less than 10 percent of our scientists, 7 percent of all physicians, 4 percent of all lawyers and one percent of all engineers, yet 51 percent of our population. There has been a decline in the proportion of women among teachers at the college and university level. Proportionately there are less women in these positions than in 1940; only two percent more than in 1920.*

Although the Civil Service Commission annual reports on the employment of women in the Federal Government show some improvement, women remain concentrated in lower grades and occupy only a small percent of professional and administrative positions.'

This March the results of an extensive survey dealing with women and their jobs were completed by the American Society for Personnel Administration and The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. The ASPA and the BNA received replies from more than 150 ASPA panel executives across the country, representing large and small employers.

Their study revealed that nearly three-fifths of the companies involved disqualified women, on the basis of their sex, from jobs running the gamut from claims adjuster to airline pilot; nearly one-third (31%) of the companies had a work force that was more than half female, but percentage distribution of females was heavily weighted in rank-and-file office jobs low in professional and management categories; nearly half (45%) of the firms had 70 percent or more women in general office work, while almost three-fourths (73%) had less than 5 percent women professional and technical employees. Similarly, just over a quarter of the companies (26%) had no women working as first-line su3 Fact Sheet on the Earnings Gap, Women's Bureau, Wage and Labor Standards Administration, U.S. Department of Labor (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1970), pp. 1–2.

4 Ibid., p. 3.

5 Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Woman's Place (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970), p. 2.

1969 Handbook, p. 99.

Study of Employment of Women in the Federal Government, 1968, U.S. Civil Service Commission (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1969).

pervisors and another 43 percent had less than 5 percent women supervisors. Management above first-line supervisors was even more male-dominated. Nearly nine-tenths of the companies (87%) had 5 percent or fewer women in these categories; 39 percent of these had no women at all in management positions." In these cases we do not have a problem of equal pay for equal work, but as mentioned before, a more subtle discrimination, not covered by law, by which women are deliberately consigned to different kinds of jobs than men, jobs that pay less, offer little or no advancement possibilities, provide a minimum of creativity and responsibility. Why should a woman college graduate in English be asked if she can type when she applies for a job and a man considered for research or editorial responsibilities? Why are 34 percent of all employed women clerical workers?" Yet these are the facts at a time when: 1) more women than ever before are working, 2) women have more education and 3) women are provided with more freedom to work outside the home.

The reasons for this state of affairs are multiple. I would like to list only a few and then proceed to the legislation at hand as related to these realities of sexual discrimination.

There are myths concerning women workers that are difficult to dissipate and that are used to establish, to explain, and to justify this kind of economic discrimination, this consignment of women to lower paying, less challenging positions.

For example, women are accused of a high rate of absenteeism and labor turnover. Yet a recent report indicates that sex is not the determinant of the amount of sickness or the chances of an individual leaving one job for another. A Public Health Service study of worktime lost because of illness or injury showed an average of 5.6 days lost by women and 5.3 lost by men during a calendar year. It was also shown that women are less likely to be absent because of chronic conditions such as heart trouble and more likely to be absent because of acute illness, with men the reverse. Another analysis indicates that women's illnesses usually keep them away from work for shorter periods than men's illnesses do. As for occupational mobility, if women leave the job to return home to take care of a growing family, men leave for increased employment opportunity, to better themselves. The Report concluded that: all in all, the skill level of the job, the age of the worker, the worker's length of service with the employers, and the worker's record of job stability-all provide better clues to an understanding of differences in work performance than does the matter of sex.10

Another myth is the idea that women only work for a brief time until they get married. Factually, this is not the case since working women constitute almost 42 percent of all women of working age, 37 percent of the work force. In almost three out of five cases, the working woman is married and her average age is 39."

We are also told that women work to afford luxuries, yet the Labor Department reports that millions of the women who were in the labor force in March, 1968 worked to support themselves or others. This was true of the majority of the 6.4 million single women workers. Nearly all the 5.6 million women workers who were widowed, divorced, or separated from their husbands-particularly those also raising children-were working for compelling economic reasons. In addition, the 2.3 million married women workers whose husbands had incomes of less than $3,000 in 1967 certainly worked because of economic need. If we take into account those women whose husbands had incomes between $3,000 and $5,000 (which is still below the amount considered necessary even for a low standard of living for an urban family of four), about 2.2 million women are added.12

Again we are told that women are passive, non-agressive and so must assume certain kinds of jobs (naturally these are the lesser paying jobs) and avoid others (management, policy-making positions). Or, quite the contrary, women are pictured as temperamental, overly emotional and therefore unable to assume responsibilities. Related to this is the theory that women are not born to com8 ASPA-BNA Survey: Employment of Women, American Society for Personnel Administration-Bureau of National Affairs (Washington, D.C., Bureau of National Affairs, e. 1970), pp. 1-2.

91969 Handbook, p. 3.

10 Facts About Women's Absenteeism and Labor Turnover, Women's Bureau, Wage and Labor Standards Administration, U.S. Department of Labor (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1969), pp. 1-2.

11 1969 Handbook, p. 3.

13 Why Women Work, Women's Bureau, Wage and Labor Standards Administration, U.S. Department of Labor (Washington, D.C., 1970).

pete, which in a free enterprise system necessarily must consign women to the lower rungs of that ladder of success.

Such statements are based upon assumptions and reflect certain sex role concepts which continue to mold our society as well as the expectations men and women have of one another and of themselves. The effects of such attitude permeate not only the job market, but our educational institutions.

Today, even though women can technically enter most of our prominent educational institutions-and the growth of co-education is very encouraging— there are subtle, but vast areas of discrimination extant, which other witnesses will substantiate and detail. I will simply comment that we are all aware that there is a quiet quota system prevailing in our universities regarding women, and especially our graduate schools. Fellowships and scholarships are awarded to men students more frequently than women, even proportionately more frequently, when women now constitute 40 percent of the enrollment in higher education. Women may be welcome to major in the Humanities or Education, but they are often discouraged from the difficulties of science, mathematics, business administration-the areas in which they could expect better positions and greater remuneration in our technological society.

In a less obvious, direct fashion discrimination persists from kindergarten through graduate school as women are discouraged from pursuing careers other than marriage and a home. Schools do not initiate this, families and societal patterns do, but the schools of our country reinforce this situation. Women are not counselled to seek professional careers in the way men are, nor are they encouraged in professional excellence. Many teachers and textbooks reinforce stereotype male and female images that inhibit personal development and fulfillment (for males and females for that matter, since poetic and artistic talent is often discouraged in men as too feminine, as science and engineering are discouraged in females).

While I believe that they could and should assume some leadership, I am not blaming educational institutions for these conditions. They simply mirror attitudes that exist in our society which we believe must be remedied and, therefore, we come before this Congress today, convinced that the legislation before us can help in this regard.

Section 601 of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that no person shall, on the grounds or race, color, or national origin, be excluded from or discriminated against under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Section 805 (a) of H.R. 16098 calls for amending Section 601 of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to include "sex" as one of the prohibited grounds for discrimination. In other words, that provision would mean that a person could not because of sex be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or discriminated against under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

At this time we have no such guarantee. We do have sex included under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 relating to employment opportunities only. Including sex under Title VI would cover all programs or activities receiving Federal financial assistance in the form of grants, loans or contracts. We think that is important.

At the present time Executive Order No. 11246 as amended by Executive Order No. 11375 requires a policy of non-discrimination (including sex) by Federal contractors and subcontractors and employment on Federally assisted construction.

This Executive Order does not cover all kinds of Federal programs and activities as recommended in Section 805 (a) of the bill before us. Moreover, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, the agency finally responsible for implementing Executive Order No. 11246, has been anything but industrious as far as sex discrimination is concerned. One year later that Order, as amended in 1967 by Executive Order 11375, became effective; but not really, since no guidelines as to sex discrimination had been developed. One year ago January our Federation was asked to submit a statement on the then proposed sex guidelines to implement that Order. We filed the statement in February, 1969. Then in August of 1969 we were asked to submit oral testimony on these same guidelines. Again, we complied. In correspondence with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, we were again and again told that work was proceeding, finally on a separate document on discrimination based on sex as well as a manual regarding all prohibited discrimination. On April 20, 1970 we received a letter in answer to one of April 1, 1970, indicating that the OFCC expected the guidelines to be