immediate past president of the Women's Equity Action League; Commissioner Wilma Scott Heide, Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission, behavioral scientist, American Institutes for Research; and Dr. Ann Scott, of the State University of New York at Buffalo, representing the National Organization for Women. We will ask you to present your statements and then perhaps address questions to you individually.

May I turn to Mrs. Harmon first.

STATEMENT OF A PANEL COMPOSED OF MRS. MYRA RUTH HARMON, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL FEDERATION OF BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL WOMEN'S CLUBS, INC.; JEAN ROSS, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN; DR. ELIZABETH BOYER, IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT, WOMEN'S EQUITY ACTION LEAGUE; COMMISSIONER WILMA SCOTT HEIDE, PENNSYLVANIA HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION; BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, AMERICAN INSTITUTES FOR RESEARCH; AND DR. ANN SCOTT, UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN

Mrs. HARMON. Mrs. Green, I represent the National Federation of Professional Women's Clubs, and we are honored to be here today. You have in your hands my testimony which is documented, and in the interests of time, I will cut some of this in my oral explanations to you.

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 2 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.

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 one-fourth to almost two-fifths 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.

You have already indicated the facts of the earning gap and I will not repeat that, although it is in my testimony.

A type of occupation does not make very 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 from between 55 and 65.9 percent of what men received in the same categories.

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

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."

The next page of my testimony substantiates these statements.

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 women 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 of them 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. These 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 overtime work 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 opportunities 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.

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 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 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.

Again we are told that women are passive, nonaggressive and so must assume certain kinds of jobs (naturally these are the lesser paying jobs) and avoid others (management, policymaking positions), or quite the contrary women are pictured as tempermental, overly emotional and therefore unable to assume responsibilities. Related to this is the theory that women are not born to compete, which in a free enterprise system necessarily must consign women to the lower rungs of the 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 attitudes 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 coeducation is very encouraging there are subtle, but vast areas of discrimination extant, which other witnesses will substantiate and detail.

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

Section 805 (a) of the bill, H.R. 16098, calls for amending section 601 of the 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, and we think that is important. At the present time Executive Order No. 11246, as amended by Executive Order No. 11375 requires a policy of nondiscrimination (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. Thus we urgently request passage of this amendment to broaden the present scope of guarantees of nondiscrimination in programs and activities assisted by Federal moneys, which are funded from taxes levied on women taxpayers as well as men; and to strengthen, to give the force of law to this guarantee.

Section 805(b) of H.R. 16098 calls for amending section 702 of title VII of the Civil Rights Act to remove the present exemption of teachers from the equal employment opportunity requirements embodied in this section.

Since women in large numbers major in education and pursue careers in that field, we feel that it is especially important that education be covered.

Thirty-eight percent of bachelor degrees earned by women in 1967 were in education. Education also accounted for 51 percent of master's and 29 percent of doctor's degrees earned by women in 1967.

74.9 percent of all education degrees at the bachelor level were conferred upon women in 1966-67.

Teaching is the largest single professional occupation for women. The 1.7 million women noncollege teachers in April 1968 equaled 42 percent for all professional women.

In 1965-66 about 70 percent of all public school teachers were women. In 1968 in elementary schools, about 85 percent of all teachers were women; in secondary schools, 46 percent.

The earnings gap report notes the unequal pay accorded men and women college professors at the same academic rank. Teachers salaries for elementary and secondary education, reported by the National Education Association are not shown separately for men and women. We do notice, however, an increasing trend away from administrative positions the better paying and more responsible positions-for women. There has been a definite decline in the percentage of women holding these positions.

My written testimony indicates that the term employee would also have to be changed to include State and local political subdivisions in order to include public schools under this amendment.

Section 805 (c) of H.R. 16098 calls for adding discrimination against

women as a subject of investigation and study by the Civil Rights Commission. Our organization strongly supports this move. We are familiar with the exceptional research and publications of the Civil Rights Commission, notably the "Jobs and Civil Rights: The Role of the Federal Government in Promoting Equal Opportunity in Employment and Training," published in 1969.

We are aware that the Commission has the power to investigate complaints of discrimination and to study and collect information concerning legal developments constituting a denial of equal protection of the laws, and to appraise Federal laws and policies with respect to equal protection of the laws; to serve as a national clearinghouse for information in respect to denials of equal protection of the laws, and to submit reports, findings, and recommendations to the President and the Congress.

Certainly the instances, implications, and ramifications of sexual discrimination in our society sorely need the objective, respected, and exhaustive study that the Civil Rights Commission offers.

Our organization believes that one of the most effective instruments in our effort to make our society one of full opportunity for persons of all races, creeds, and national origins and sexes is information concerning the actual facts of discrimination.

Many men and women are totally unaware of the extent and nature of sexual discrimination in our society. We believe that the Civil Rights Commission, therefore, should be empowered to investigate, review, and report on sexual discrimination in our society.

Section 805 (d) would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to remove the exemption of executive, administrative, or professional employees from the provision requiring equal pay for equal work.

In a recent Federal court the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was described as "a broad charter of women's rights in the economic field."

We would broaden the charter. The National Federation proudly recalls the days and years during which the legislative battle to pass the equal pay bill was fought and the leadership efforts of the women of Congress, particularly the honorable chairman of this subcommittee.

We believe that the bill should be extended to cover more kinds of employment. There is no more reason for justification for discrimination at this level, in this kind of job than there is in those now covered.

From 1945 until passage of the equal pay bill in 1963, our organization worked with other women's organizations and Members of Congress to secure passage of the equal pay legislation.

As you will remember, Mrs. Green, the original administration proposal, supported by BPW and others, did not attach the equal pay bill to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Accordingly the supporters of equal pay had no intention of eliminating executive, administrative, and professional positions from

coverage.

That was a result of the fact that in the interest of getting equal pay legislation passed the proponents agreed to attach the bill as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

BPW only agreed to this in order to secure passage, fully expecting that an amendment would ultimately be added, once the legislation passed, including administrative, executive, and professional positions.