ABSTRACT
For the proponents of comparable worth, wages set by the marketplace embody the discriminatory animus of employers against women. To pay women the prevailing wage rate for a particular occupation is merely to perpetuate this historical impediment under which women suffer. Comparable worth’s critics, naturally, have a quite different view of the marketplace. Comparable worth’s detractors have tried to dispute the inference that the proponents draw from the raw data on the wage gap, i.e., that the wage disparity between the sexes can only be explained by discrimination on the part of employers. Skeptical of the ingredients of the comparable worth proponents’ case, the adversaries are equally skeptical of their tool for achieving the remedy: job evaluations. Every assumption of the technique falls under scathing critical attack, from the notion of objective value in jobs to the claim that compensation experts can measure the components of jobs and then compare the totals to arrive at a hierarchy.
