ABSTRACT
Pay equity is a concept with which few would disagree. The notion that wages should reward a worker's skill, effort, and responsibility is at the heart of the American market system of compensation. The comparable worth movement, however, is an attempt to supplant the market by proposing alternative pay mechanisms based on a subjective scoring of abstract job attributes. The rejection of traditional market principles is motivated by the perceived failure of the market process, as well as existing antidiscrimination laws, to close the wage gap between men and women and to reduce the occupational segregation of the sexes.
