In This Story
Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (2007), the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act, and Walmart v. Dukes (2011) brought renewed attention to pay equity in the policy sphere. Nevertheless, comprehensive pay reform ultimately failed and this essay seeks to explore why. Specifically, the essay offers an in-depth examination of the role of discourse in upholding the status quo. Drawing on feminist rhetorical criticism, the essay analyzes judicial and congressional equal pay discourses in the past decade, contextualizing them in historical views of women's wages. The findings suggest that contemporary debates over equal pay, like their historical counterparts, are framed in terms of a traditional male breadwinner-female homemaker model. This discursive framing, in turn, prevents consideration of progressive ideas around equal pay.
Lisa Gring-Pemble is an author on this paper from Women & Language, Volume 41.2. View the full text here.