In the summer of 2016 C.E., Massachusetts quietly made history with a piece of legislation that labor advocates had been pushing toward for decades. The state’s new equal pay law didn’t just restate old principles — it rewrote the rules in ways no other state had attempted, closing loopholes that had allowed wage gaps to persist for generations.
Key findings
- Equal pay law: Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed the bill into law in August 2016 C.E., updating the state’s 1945 C.E. equal pay statute for the first time in over 70 years.
- Salary history ban: The law prohibited employers from asking job applicants about their prior salaries — a first-in-the-nation provision that directly targeted one of the most common mechanisms by which pay inequality compounds over time.
- Comparable work standard: The law broadened the legal standard from “same work” to “comparable work,” requiring equal pay for jobs of similar skill, effort, and responsibility, even when job titles differ.
What the law actually changed
Before 2016 C.E., Massachusetts — like most states — relied on a narrow “same work” standard. That meant two employees doing essentially identical jobs could be paid differently if their titles or departments differed slightly. Employers could also anchor a new hire’s salary to whatever she had earned before, making it nearly impossible for women to escape historical underpayment.
The new law attacked both problems at once. By banning salary history inquiries, it forced employers to set wages based on the job itself — its requirements, its market value — rather than on what a candidate had been paid by a previous employer who may have underpaid her. By expanding the comparable work standard, it gave workers stronger legal footing when wages differed across roles that were substantively similar.
The law also clarified which pay differences are legally permissible — seniority, merit, geographic location, production-based systems — and explicitly prohibited employers from retaliating against workers who discuss their pay with coworkers. That last provision matters enormously in practice. Wage transparency is one of the most effective tools workers have for identifying disparate pay, and many employers had long discouraged or quietly forbidden such conversations.
Why the salary history ban was the centerpiece
Research had shown for years that asking for salary history was one of the clearest drivers of cumulative wage inequality. A woman who was underpaid at 25 carries that disadvantage into every job she holds afterward, with each new salary negotiated as a percentage increase over the last. The cycle compounds quietly and legally.
Massachusetts was the first state in the country to ban the practice outright. Within two years, more than a dozen states and several major cities had followed, making this provision one of the most replicated labor policy innovations of the decade.
Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research has since found that salary history bans are associated with measurable increases in wages for women and Black job applicants — precisely the populations most likely to have been systematically underpaid in prior roles. The effect is strongest at the point of hire, where the new framework shifts negotiating power.
Broader context: who championed this
The bill passed the Massachusetts legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support — a rarity in 2016 C.E. on any issue touching gender. That consensus reflected years of organizing by labor groups, women’s advocacy organizations, and business coalitions that had come to see pay equity as both a fairness issue and an economic one. When workers are underpaid, consumer spending and household stability suffer in ways that ripple outward.
The law gave employers a meaningful incentive to comply: companies that conduct good-faith self-audits of their pay practices and work to correct disparities are shielded from certain lawsuits for up to three years. This provision was unusual — it rewarded proactive correction rather than simply punishing violations after the fact. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office released detailed guidance to help employers understand their obligations before the law took effect in 2018 C.E.
Women workers of color, who face compounding disadvantages at the intersection of gender and race-based pay gaps, stood to benefit most from the new standard. Data from the Center for American Progress consistently shows that Black and Latina women in the U.S. face wage gaps significantly wider than those experienced by white women — making structural reforms like this one more consequential for them than aggregate statistics tend to suggest.
Lasting impact
The Massachusetts law became a model. Its salary history ban has since been adopted in some form by more than 20 states and numerous municipalities across the U.S. Its comparable work standard influenced subsequent state-level equal pay efforts seeking to close the definitional loopholes that had long limited enforcement.
More broadly, the law helped shift public understanding of how pay inequality actually works. It’s not always the result of a single discriminatory act. More often it’s structural — built into hiring processes, anchored to historical data, and compounded by silence. By naming those mechanisms and making them illegal, Massachusetts gave other lawmakers a clearer roadmap.
Blindspots and limits
The law applies to private employers and has meaningful exemptions, and enforcement depends on workers knowing their rights and being willing to pursue complaints — a significant barrier for those in vulnerable employment situations. The gender wage gap in Massachusetts, as nationally, has narrowed slowly since the law took effect, and scholars continue to debate how much of the remaining gap reflects unmeasured factors versus ongoing discrimination. No single law closes a gap built over generations.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Feminist Majority Foundation
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Marie-Louise Eta becomes the first female head coach in men’s top-flight European football
- Global suicide rate has fallen by 40% since 1995
- The Good News for Humankind archive on gender equity
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