The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and Competing Visions of the Living Wage

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between legislated wage floors and the more elusive concept of a living wage. Wages are one way that society has signaled gender and racial identity and constitute an important social practice for shaping gender relations. In the debates over passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, advocates simultaneously utilized alternative definitions of the term living wage. In part, these alternative views of the living wage reflected attempts to distinguish different forms of masculinity.