Real Life Story of Unequal Pay

All Female Professors-Framingham, Massachusetts

In 1976, female professors at Framingham State College filed an Equal Pay Act claim, alleging that they had received salaries lower than their male colleagues performing equivalent work. The women proved that they were doing substantially equal work under similar conditions. Testimony about a board of trustees meeting where the board decided that the college should pay discriminatory wages, proved that there was a willful violation of the act which entitled the women to back pay for three years prior to the filing, as opposed to two which is the usual limit.

E.E.O.C. v. McCarthy, 578 F. Supp. 45 (D. Mass. 1983)