Insufficient Intersectionality: The Limits of Federal Wage Discrimination Lawsuits in the 21st Century

In the United States, women who work full-time earn substantially less than their male colleagues. The gap is even larger for intersectionally marginalized women, including women with disabilities, Black and Latina women, women with children, middle-aged women, and LGBTQ+ women. These patterns suggest that closing the wage gap will be impossible unless we consider how intersectionally marginalized women fare under US equal pay laws. Building on foundational work on the intersectional failings of US anti-discrimination laws, we provide the first large N-analysis of how women who file equal pay cases based on gender and one or more of their intersecting identities based on ability status, age, race, nationality, pregnancy, and/or sexual orientation fare in court. The analysis of 1,135 equal pay cases from 2000 to 2021 shows women who file intersectional equal pay cases are significantly less likely to win than women who file equal pay cases based on gender alone.