ABSTRACT
Comparable worth deserves a fair hearing—a dispassionate examination, free from the acrimony of much that has passed for public debate. For the large majority of women who perform traditionally female jobs—nurses, secretaries, elementary school teachers, social workers, day care attendants—their problem in achieving fair treatment in the marketplace for wages is not addressed by the Equal Pay Act’s prohibition. The marketplace systematically undervalues the work of women and minorities simply because that work is performed by members of disfavored groups. For supporters of comparable worth, then, the market is riddled with discrimination, some of it addressed by the anti-discrimination legislation of the early 1960s, but much of it left undisturbed, to linger on as vestiges of an oppressive, male-dominated society. Comparable worth claims to replace the subjective judgments of employers in the marketplace about the value of various jobs with objective judgments fashioned by experts.
