Despite the laws, sex discrimination still happens.

• Employers still refuse to hire, promote, or equally pay women for no other reason than that they’re women.
• Thousands of women each year are penalized just for getting pregnant. They’re fired. Or they’re put on immediate unpaid leave. Or they’re put on lesser duties—and lesser pay.
• Other women are sexually harassed or demoted until they were driven out of their jobs, or fired outright, simply because they were female.
• Pink and blue paychecks remain. Women are still 80 to 98 percent of all the workers in the categories of receptionist, secretary, cashier, sales worker, registered nurse, elementary school teacher, nursing aide, bookkeeper, and waitress-—and only 2 to 20 percent of all engineers, police officers, firefighters, mechanics, and construction equipment operators.

Getting Even calculates that somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of America's 40 million working women endure job discrimination at least once during a decade. Adding It Up: How Many Women Face Discrimination?

The wage gap is but one piece of evidence of enduring sex discrimination. Intentional Job Discrimination in Metropolitan America, a study conducted by Rutgers law Professors Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen, estimate that in 1999 some 2 million women worked for employers who met the legal standard for de facto intentional discrimination.

The National Partnership’s study, Women at Work: Looking Behind the Numbers 40 Years After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, found that sex discrimination complaints filed with the EEOC actually have increased over the past decade, especially complaints by women of color. The National Partnership reported a 12% increase in sex discrimination charges overall, with a 29% increase in sexual harassment claims and a 39% increase in pregnancy discrimination claims. More women than men also file charges that they have faced retaliation from their employers for reporting discrimination.