The Trouble with Comparable Worth

...Unlike the feminists of the 1970s, they do not disparage women's work...

...Finally, comparable-worth appraisals would likely prove inflexible in the face of rapid technological change, and this rigidity is bound to hurt the long-term interests of women holding traditional jobs...

...It already has been an issue in collective bargaining negotiations at AT&T...

...Should the U.S...

...Practices of that kind have been illegal for over 20 years, and today affirmative action procedures require firms to recruit women for high-paying jobs aggressively...

...It would promote higher costs, bureaucratic capriciousness and continual litigation as female workers and employers contested evaluations...

...would make it applicable to private industry, too...

...In the most important ruling to date, U.S...

...Yet the premise that women are victims of systematic and intentional bias, while it may once have been valid and still cannot be ruled out altogether, is hardly very compelling now...

...Hence the ratings of rival consulting firms yield evaluations that vary significantly...

...After all, it "discriminates" here, too: It generally pays accountants more than professors, and major league baseball players more than either...

...Since industry has long seemed to rely on such procedures, it is reasonable to wonder why questions are raised when they are employed to redress the consequences of sex-based discrimination...

...By contrast, comparable-worth researchers seek to discover the "true" value of a job, independent of its standing in the market...

...It would freeze the rewards of allegedly comparable occupations, despite possible fluctuations in their relative market power...

...In short, women continue to pursue certain low-paying jobs—albeit in smaller numbers—because they are compatible with raising a family and are in some cases inherently rewarding...

...The independent specialists assign "quality points" to different kinds of endeavor, using such "gender-neutral" criteria as skill, knowledge, mental demands, responsibility, and working conditions...

...His December 1983 decision is being appealed, but in the meantime at least 13 states and scores of municipalities have implemented or are considering comparable-worth demands...

...This strategy might not resolve every grievance, but it has an impressive track record, and it would lead us away from the uncharted and probably treacherous waters of comparable worth...

...Rather surprisingly, pay-equity proponents come close to making the same analysis...

...The method assumes that an objective way exists to evaluate how much an individual engaged in a particJean Yarbrough, a new contributor, is associate professor of political science at Loyola University of Chicago...

...Even a National Academy of Science study requested by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it is further noted, found that "objective" factors—education, experience, commitment—could explain only half the disparity, leaving the inference that sexual prejudice accounts for the remainder...

...Men's earnings would still be pegged to the market...

...No, at present the "average" woman earns less than the "average" man for more interesting reasons than male exploitation...

...At the moment, comparable worth is a legal bone of contention solely in the public sector...

...Supreme Court ultimately endorse the principle, it would theoretically be extended to every woman's job in our society...

...Civil Rights Commission's staff director...

...Representative Mary Rose Oakar (D...

...There is nothing self-evident in the categories measured (skill, knowledge and the rest), the points assigned to them for any occupation, or their relative weight...

...In this vein, O' Neill concludes that" the government should be trying to break down barriers against women in fields like engineering, not looking for ways to get pay increases for library work...

...To establish which women's and men's positions in totally unrelated fields are indeed comparable, advocates of what is also called pay equity have turned to job-evaluation consultants...

...women's earnings in equivalent jobs would therefore rise only along with those of the opposite sex (not much attention has been devoted to the possibility of their falling...

...But any thoroughgoing attempt to make them do so would wreak economic and political havoc...

...Consequently, tying their compensation to dissimilar occupations that are changing at a slower rate, or not at all, would undermine their career mobility or hit them in the pocketbook...

...They reject that yardstick on the ground it unintentionally discriminates against women...

...Computers promise to revolutionize the activities of secretaries and librarians, to cite one example, relieving them of many mundane chores they currently perform and enhancing their strength in the marketplace...

...Yet the tests used to rank different positions are entirely subjective, if not downright arbitrary...

...These efforts have begun to produce results...

...instead, they insist that women should not have to bear the economic price of their choice...

...The notion is advancing on other fronts as well...

...A free enterprise system makes less disruptive and more efficacious remedies available to women...

...District Judge Jack Tanner said the state of Washington must immediately raise the wages of female employees to their "evaluated worth...

...Witness the dramatic increase in female executives and professionals...

...Colo...

...In these assessments the experts inevitably tell us more about their own opinions than about the reality of the workplace...

...In the event raises could not be given to both, men might be asked—and they were in San Jose, California—to forgo or reduce their demands, a course that would further erode the work ethic for men and women alike...

...Marital status and age are other important factors...

...But their proof overlooks the effects of the market on predominantly male professions...

...This gap, they argue, reflects the fact that certain occupations—teaching and secretarial work, for example—are poorly remunerated because females dominate them...

...ular activity is entitled to earn...

...They should continue to move into higher-paying professions: those who cannot—notably older women and the unskilled— should organize in whatever jobs they already have...

...After close examination, however, I think the campaign for comparable worth is flawed in its method, mistaken in its premise and potentially disastrous in its effects...

...Confronted with those objections, some take the opposite tack and maintain that market forces do not actually determine female salaries...

...Thus armed with seemingly scientific evidence, feminists are taking their case to the courts, to legislatures and to collective-bargaining sessions...

...From the opposite perspective, it could be said that women would then have less incentive to break out of the old molds...

...Perhaps most tellingly, females who have never married and have pursued careers outside women's work without interruption bring home approximately as much as their male counterparts do...

...For instance, stiff competition from cheap imports curbs the income of members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, roughly 85 per cent of whom are female...

...In this view, male bosses created the traditional categories of "women's work," whose wages they have artificially held down...

...The difference, though, is that company studies include the impact of supply and demand...

...Many women, moreover, are in poorly paid fields simply not covered by collective-bargaining agreements, and a large number have been organized by newer unions lacking the clout of older, craft bodies...

...Supporters of the idea that the value of a j ob can be determined outside the marketplace, and that completely dissimilar jobs of supposedly similar intrinsic value should offer the same compensation, point out that the average woman earns 64 cents for each dollar earned by the average man...

...Other facets of the issue extend beyond the concerns of women...

...For if there is really a "just wage" not tied to markets, fairness requires that all salaries reflect it...

...Another measure, introduced by Representative Pat Schroeder (D...

...In addition, the gap is smaller, 28 per cent, for mean hourly pay than for yearly pay, indicating that many mothers of small children do not work full-time...

...When only young men and women are considered, it declines to 1 1-12 percent...

...Ohio) has introduced a bill that would apply it to the Federal government...

...According to June O'Neill, director of the Program on Women and the Family at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., research group, earnings differentials can in part be attributed to multitudes of women interrupting their careers for motherhood...

...Primary among them is, yes, supply and demand, a force that functions in often complex ways...