ABSTRACT
Comparable worth’s opponents score their most telling blows against the notion that value can be objectively measured and that job evaluations can provide the tool for performing such measurements and, ultimately, for comparing radically dissimilar jobs. Comparable worth will be seen to depend on some rather dubious assumptions and to embrace a view of equality that is at odds with our American tradition, unpersuasive as an ideal, and incapable of being put into practice without chaotic results. Comparable worth shares with the labor theory of value a desire to discover some objective characteristics of worth or value apart from the valuations in the marketplace derived from the choices of actual buyers. Comparable worth proponents believe the market for women’s work has been distorted by centuries of discrimination. Another feature of the market system deserves more attention than it has received thus far in the debate over comparable worth.
