“We Do Not Want to be Petted. We Want Simply Justice”: A Precocious Debate over Equal Pay for Women in Civil War Era Washington

Although still new to their jobs and retaining them somewhat precariously, early female federal employees consistently petitioned their government to properly recognize and reward their labor. Between late 1864 and early 1870, Congress received at least 740 female federal employee signatures on eleven separate petitions from women asking for greater pay. Some of these women argued that since they performed the same work as men, they should be paid the same. The efforts of these early female federal employees to obtain greater and equal pay, including petitioning and politicking, engendered a precocious debate in Congress about gender equality that came remarkably close to achieving pay parity for women. In three discussions in the Senate and one in the House of Representatives between 1867 and 1870, Congressmen engaged in dialogues about fiscal pragmatism, justice, gender equality, and Washington, D.C.’s responsibility as an example to the nation. The debate on female clerks’ pay was not contained to the capital. Federal civil servants were a national concern, discussed in newspapers from Maine to Hawaii. Although both houses passed legislation providing for equal pay, and the public expressed support of it, the movement ultimately failed. The defeat of1860s equal pay debates had consequences that far outlived the generation of agitating female employees. By failing to equalize wages in the federal workforce, the government set a national standard devaluing female labor that in some ways lingers to this day.