The Surprising Origins of the Gender Pay Gap... a Sex Scandal | The Pay Check S1E2

There was a brief moment 150 years ago when it looked like women might get

equal pay for equal work. But they didn’t—and that set the standard for

decades to come. On this episode of the Pay Check, Rebecca Greenfield

revisits a Civil War-era sex scandal that set the stage for the pay gap

debates we're having right now. She talks to Claire Suddath about how a

century of rules and laws saying what women can and can’t do have made it

easy for companies to pay women less.

One big reason the gender pay gap still exists is because of a phenomenon

called "occupational sorting"— the idea that some jobs are dominated by

women, and those jobs often pay less. That didn't just happen. Claire and

Rebecca sort through how history determined the market value for women.

Then Claire talks with Lilly Ledbetter, whose fight for gender equality at

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. seemed like an open and shut case—until a

loophole in the law denied her justice.

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