On this date in 1963, Congress enacted the Equal Pay Act to prohibit discrimination on account of sex in the payment of wages for equal work by employers. Currently, women are paid 78 cents for every dollar of men’s wages, up from 61 cents in 1960. One factor in this disparity is the composition of civilian noninstitutional employment, where there are 79 million working men over 16 years old, as opposed to 69.3 million women. But women outnumber men in the ranks of part-time workers by a ratio of around two to one. There are also different job tenures, often caused by career interruptions for childbirth and rearing. Men working full time average around 42 hours on the job per week, versus 37 hours for women. Profile America is in its 19th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.