By Lenora M. Lapidus, Women’s Rights Project, ACLU

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act. On June 10, 1963, Congress enacted the first law to require employers to pay women the same salaries that they pay men. When the law was enacted, I was not quite one month old.

Equal Pay Today!

My mother fought for passage of the EPA. She brought me, her newborn baby, to a march on Washington to demand equal pay for women. My childhood was permeated with debates about “Women’s Lib.” Although she, like my father, was a university professor, prior to passage of the EPA, Columbia University could pay her less than it paid my dad, simply because she was a woman. Passage of the Equal Pay Act was the first major victory of the “second wave” women’s movement.

May 17, 1963: the day Lenora was born

They’ve hit a new low.

Citing significant concerns about long lines at airports and flight delays caused by the furlough of air-traffic controllers, Congress is allowing the Federal Aviation Administration to override strict sequestration rules and re-direct funds within its budget. And they did so with lightning speed.

With their big fuss over aviation punctuality, lawmakers make it clear that they’re not feeling the pain felt by the majority of Americans. Their message: In the United States it’s fine to wait — and face a steep climb — for housing, health care, cancer treatment, a pre-school slot, domestic violence intervention services, federal work study, or job retraining. But our planes? They better take off on time.

A little over 25 years ago, Dr. Heidi Hartmann dashed between meetings and a part-time fellowship in a 1969 Buick with a couple of boxes of files dedicated to research on women’s economic security in the back of a rather sizable trunk. This corner of Dr. Hartmann’s Buick can safely be referred to as the first unofficial office of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR). The meetings she shuffled between were to unearth funding here and there for gender analysis on women’s role in a modern workforce. With a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale, Dr. Hartmann began her research career at National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council studying the underpayment of jobs typically done by women (for example, secretary, teacher, nurse). When she co-founded IWPR with other social scientists, she was driven by an awareness of the persistence of women’s inequality and economic insecurity, an awareness fostered by her upbringing in a single-mother, single-income household.

Dr. Heidi Hartmann, IWPR president and co-founder. Photo courtesy Chet Susslin, National Journal.

Sheryl Sandburg’s new book Lean In puts a spotlight on the shortage of women leaders in the work force. She underscores that motherhood is a time when many women get side tracked from their careers. She advises young women to “lean in” in order to stay on track, move up the hierarchy, and become leaders. Women who step back when they anticipate motherhood or are sidelined when they become pregnant are falling off the top career tracks.

At MomsRising, we celebrate mothers in leadership and value leaders like Sheryl who encourage and mentor other women to lead. This said, leaning in is not always possible, especially when work policies make it more challenging rather than less to meet responsibilities both at work and at home.