[3] After Kennedy's election, he asked Roosevelt to chair a new commission proposed by Esther Peterson, then Director of the United States Women's Bureau.

However, more often, protective legislation just provided employers with the justification to avoid hiring women altogether or to not pay them the same wages as men received.

Until the 1970s, trade unions/organized labor opposed the Equal Rights Amendment (which would have prevented laws holding different standards for men and women).

In 1961, Paterson met with trade union women, including Dollie Robinson and Kitty Ellickson, and began to draft a proposal for the PCSW.

The PCSW's very existence gave the federal government an incentive to again consider women's rights and roles as being a serious issue worthy of political debate and public policy-making.

The Kennedy administration itself publicly positioned the PCSW as a Cold War era initiative to free up women's talents for national security purposes.

PCSW Commission and committee members came from professional organizations, trade unions, and religious groups, as well as presidents of colleges and the Secretaries of all the relevant executive branch agencies.

The report criticized inequalities facing the American woman in a "free" society while acknowledging the importance of women's traditional gender roles.

U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau head Esther Peterson appeared on The Today Show to discuss commission findings and ramifications.

The Associated Press ran a four-part nationwide story on the final report recommendations, and a 1965 mass-market book was published of the findings.

In 1964, the U.S. Department of Labor began to bring members of state commissions to Washington annually to discuss best practices to combat such discrimination.