ABSTRACT
Census figures for 1988 showed that for full-time wage and salaried employees, women's median weekly earnings were about 70 percent that of men's (U.S. Department of Labor 1990). Among the factors contributing to the pay gap between men and women is sex segregation in the labor market—that is, the tendency of men and women to work in different occupations and jobs (England 1992). Comparable worth (also known as pay equity) refers to a policy that compares pay levels of jobs done disproportionately by men with pay levels of jobs done disproportionately by women and tries to adjust pay so that the women and men who work in female-dominated jobs are not penalized because their jobs are done disproportionately by women. The policy presumes that jobs can be ranked objectively according to requisite skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. After such a ranking, pay is adjusted so that equivalently ranked male and female-dominated jobs receive equivalent pay (Hartmann et al. 1985; Blum 1991, p. 2).
