'More than just a woman’s fight': Stories of the Equal Pay Act

It was pretty obvious there was something wrong with the newspaper job listings.

The postings were separated between men and women — the latter often advertising lower-paid gigs. It was a common practice until a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling said job listings could no longer be segregated.

“I learned very quickly not to even bother looking at the want ads for women,” said Janis Ramey.

Ramey graduated from Carnegie Mellon University — then called Carnegie Institute of Technology — in 1962. With a passion for science and writing, she naturally gravitated to what was then the new field of technical writing, in which professionals create manuals, guides and similar publications about specialized topics.

Just one year after she graduated, the Equal Pay Act was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy. It was landmark legislation. It stated that employees, regardless of gender, must be paid equal pay “for equal work on jobs the performances of which requires equal skill, effort and responsibility and which are performed under similar working conditions.”

The act was a critical step forward. For many women, the workplace has become more welcoming, with some protections in place to support fairer paychecks and working conditions than it was 60 years ago. But the job is hardly finished.

Ramey is one of several women who shared their experiences with the Tribune-Review.

Filling a niche

In the 1960s, technical writing was a job mostly handled by men, often engineers. Being one of the few women in a male-dominated field, Ramey said she faced her share of discrimination.

Fresh out of college, she was hired by the Department of Energy’s Bureau of Mines’ Bruceton facility, near South Park, where she already had interned.

“I was hired at a certain government level. It was the equivalent of being hired as an engineer, so it had the same pay level, the same government service level,” she said. “When I showed up for my first day of work, they said they made a mistake and wouldn’t be hiring me at that level after all, instead putting me at a lower level with at least 25% less money. I was not happy.”

Ramey stuck with the job for six months and began looking for other work — this time through an employment agency.

“I went Downtown, got off the elevator and told the receptionist that I was looking for a job as a technical writer,” she recalled. “The receptionist pointed down the hall to her right and told me who to ask for. I discovered when I started talking to that person, he had no idea about technical writing, and I tried to explain. I said, ‘Shouldn’t I be talking to somebody who hires engineers?’ He said that wouldn’t happen.

“I discovered that if you walked in wearing a skirt, you go down one hallway, and if you wore a man’s suit, you went in the other direction,” Ramey said.

In 1969, she had her first child, a daughter. She later had two boys. “It was extraordinarily rare for a mother to continue working, so it never occurred to me to try,” she said. “But my boss at the time asked me to continue working on a project from home.”

That gig led Ramey to continue working from her home in Upper St. Clair, where she started her own technical writing business. Her clients included Westinghouse, Alcoa and PPG, as well as smaller engineering and software companies.

“It worked well because the companies in Pittsburgh needed writers, but they didn’t always want to hire someone full time,” Ramey, 83, said. “I filled a niche.”

Decades later, she retired to Longwood at Oakmont, winding down the business in 2010.

‘We’re not adequately supporting families’

Victoria Snyder had a passion for advocacy at a young age. When she was about 8, her mother took her to Washington, D.C., to march for union rights.

Her path led her to the Capitol again in 2022, when she testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the need for affordable child care and paid leave. She is a member of MomsRising, a national organization that works toward economic security, including paid family leave, earned sick days, affordable childcare, and for an end to wage and hiring discrimination.

An entrepreneur and single mother, Snyder, 37, of Sewickley, spoke about the difficulty of arranging care for her now 5-year-old son, Braxton, and the responsibilities of being a small business owner, which carries more uncertainty than a corporate job.

“If I have to choose between working 40 hours to have health benefits or having to work 90 hours in my small business around my son’s schedule in order to be there for him, making sure he can access the services that he needs, I’ll deal with the stress every day,” she testified. “And that’s why the paid leave for all is so important.”

Snyder had started her own business, Self-Care Señorita, a lifestyle blog and wellness website in 2019. The business added subscription boxes that featured products from small, local businesses.

“Equal pay is more than just a woman’s fight,” she said. “If we don’t adequately pay women, it means we’re not also adequately supporting families.”

Recently, she began to wind down her business when she was hired as director of strategic initiatives for North Shore-based Riverside Center for Innovation, which provides services for entrepreneurs, with the goal of creating a sustainable and diverse economy.

“The organization has a mission that’s important to me,” Snyder said, adding that it was supportive for families, offering flexibility and allowing her to bring her kid to work when needed. “There’s equitable pay for the work that I do.”

Advocating for yourself

If it wasn’t for the pandemic, Natasha Tull would have been able to better hide the stress of her job from her family. Instead, working from home made it more visible.

The startup environment at a previous job meant that roles weren’t clearly defined. And while the company discussed things like diversity, equity and inclusion, and tried to address how its pay scale could be more in line with the industry, many initiatives didn’t come to fruition or fell short, Tull said.

Some employees had started to discuss their pay among themselves, but it still felt like a taboo topic, Tull said. And they wanted the company to invest in its workers, both in pay and in professional development.

“Before I left, they were working on trying to better align themselves with the market,” said Tull, 42, of Lincoln Borough, who wished not to identify her previous employer. “There were a lot of people who felt like they were being paid below market price for the work that they were being asked to do while wearing multiple hats.

“My daughter witnessed what was happening. If we hadn’t shifted to remote work, my family would not have understood why I would come home upset or crying.”

Tull is teaching her daughter to advocate for herself.

“Do not let those doors close without getting proper disclosure of a job situation. Make sure that you keep things in writing, and don’t be afraid to have the conversation about pay equity. Use those tools that they give you, like the employee handbook,” she said.

“Keep a log of your wins and losses,” Tull said. “Don’t always look for the negative. Look for the merit of your position and why you are there. Remind them of why they hired you and that you’re worth investing in as a person, not just a body in a seat. You’re worth the conversation. If one place doesn’t meet your needs, seek somewhere else that will.”

She hopes her daughter won’t have to face the challenges she has faced.

“I hope when she enters the workforce, the pay equity conversation will be a thing of the past.”

Tull referred to the 2019 report by the Gender Equity Commission that found pay disparity disproportionately impacts women of color, especially in Pittsburgh. That report found, for example, in Pittsburgh, white women make 78 cents to every dollar that white men make. Meanwhile, Asian, multiracial, Latina, Other, and Native American women make 59 cents and Pittsburgh’s Black women make 54 cents on the dollar.

“We hear that Pittsburgh is a great place, a livable city,” Tull said. “I don’t disagree. But I think people gloss over the pain of what African American women experience here, or they try to capitalize off of the pain.

“Instead of doing that, why not support those who are trying to bring us up to a standard of living that we have been trying to achieve, which is an equal playing field?”

Promoting transparency

Vicki Loucks has been at the same Greensburg company for 30 years. Now vice president and chief operations officer for Redstone Presbyterian Seniorcare, Loucks worked her way up from a graduate nurse in 1993.

In that time, she had scheduled pay increases, often tied to annual reviews or promotions. That removed a lot of uncertainty surrounding compensation. And it was part of the company’s culture.

“I know many other women who have had to fight for a fair salary, and I know that I’m fortunate,” said Loucks, 58, of New Stanton. “It was reassuring to know that I was valued regardless of my gender.

“I had the support of a great mentor, a great CEO and an organization that valued my opinion and invited me to the table.”

Loucks said transparency within an organization builds trust among the people who work there.

“It’s about learning that you can trust your co-workers and your superiors,” she said. “It’s the teamwork that comes from having like a servant leader who recognizes that the voice of an employee is as important as the voice of the people that you serve.”

Making the correction

Anne Medsger had been in academia after working as a nurse for years. In the early 1990s, after Medsger had worked about 10 years as a research associate, an administrative assistant noticed the difference in Medsger’s paycheck compared to that of her male colleagues.

“One day she said to me, ‘Do you know that you’re paid just a fraction of what the men are doing in the same job?’ ”

“I had never thought to ask about it,” said Medsger, who is now retired in Longwood at Oakmont. “There was the perception that I had a husband who also was employed, so I didn’t need the money as much as the men who were also supporting families.”

She brought up the subject with her department head, “with whom I had a really good working relationship” and found support.

“There was no discussion,” she said. “He said, ‘You’re right,’ and addressed it. He felt terrible. We talked about how to fix it. The difference in pay was substantial. People didn’t recognize the inequity. It was just the way things were. But he corrected it.”

“It really pointed out to me about being an advocate for yourself and for other women in similar positions,” said Medsger, now in her 80s. “I was approaching my retirement. If I hadn’t said anything, I would have retired with a much lower income.”