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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

It's pretty much common knowledge that in many workplaces, women make less money than men.

So let me introduce you to a remarkable woman named Winifred C. Stanley.

She was a Republican representative in Congress from New York in the 1940s. It was

Stanley who first introduced equal pay legislation in Congress. That's right, a law to do what should

have been and should still be obvious. Stanley was one of the few women serving in Congress at the time. She was a champion for

women's rights. She ran for office on a campaign budget of $6. Before she entered Congress, she was a tough

prosecutor who fought for and won the rights of women to serve on

juries in New York State. Stanley had a fierce determination to win the rights and status

that men enjoyed. She lost more than she won. Headlines called her Miss Stanley, or the Buffalo

Beauty.

Fellow New York Representative James Wadsworth Jr., the man in charge of committee assignments,

kept her off the Judiciary Committee because he thought women belonged in the home.

Nobody really cared much about her political skills or ambitions. I mean, just months before she championed the equal pay legislation,

she was named the best-dressed woman in public life.

But that didn't deter Stanley.

It took her only about a year to galvanize the support of women's and civil rights groups.

As World War II wound down, she introduced her bill for equal pay in hopes of continuing the energy that women contributed to the war effort.

The bill proposed adding a paragraph to the National Labor Relations Act.

That paragraph said, quote,

discrimination against employees and rates of compensation paid on account of sex

...