Lucy Randolph Mason was an early supporter of pay equity. During her tenure as the General Secretary of the National Consumer's League, she lead a protest against discrimination in federal jobs. The 1935 Recovery Act stated that women who worked for the government were to be paid 25% less than men doing the same job. The people who thought up this legislation probably thought they were being progressive as 75 cents on the dollar was better than most women did in non-government jobs at the time. In fact, it was better than most women did until quite recently.
The National Consumer's League thought differently. They thought that slightly less crappy was not good enough. They thought that the government pay should only be based on merit and on the work done, not on race or sex.
RTD, Denver area's transit agency, used to have one of the best records when it came to hiring women of all the transit agency's in the US. Which is to say it was pretty dismal, but not completely ridiculous. I wonder what it is now. Most people in RTD's planning department, like most transit planners in the US, are white men. This limits the experience that the planning department has to draw on, and it indicates that there are limits on the jobs that women can reasonably pursue.
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