''Comparable worth'' is one approach to increasing pay equity between jobs done primarily by women and minorities and those done primarily by majority men. It refers to equalizing compensation for jobs requiring comparable levels of effort, skill, and responsibility. The concept of comparable worth defines ''equal work'' as ''work of equivalent value,'' a broader concept than limiting ''equal work'' to meaning the ''same work.'' Comparable worth uses job-evaluation methods to establish equivalencies of different jobs in order to identify and correct disparities in pay between jobs held primarily by women and minority men and jobs held primarily by nonminority men. It is worth noting that the term pay equity is often used in conjunction with discussions of comparable worth; it usually refers not only to comparable worth but also to other approaches to achieving equity and justice in wages. Pay equity is the best subject heading or ''key word'' to use when doing further research on the topic of comparable worth.
Proponents of using comparable worth to establish pay equity argue that 1) at least some part of the lower wages in female-dominated jobs and occupations is due to pay discrimination against women, and 2) job evaluation systems can determine the equivalency of different jobs and thus identify the jobs and occupations where this form of discrimination exists.
The issue of comparable worth arose in response to obvious differences in the rewards for jobs held primarily by women and those held primarily by men—even when those jobs required the same or similar levels of education, skill, and responsibility. Advocates of comparable worth and pay equity argue that these wage differences are based on historical and current discrimination in the setting of wages for jobs held primarily by women and minorities. That is, jobs in which workers are primarily women and minorities have been, and remain, systematically undervalued relative to equivalent jobs held by majority men. This undervaluation depresses the wages in jobs done by women and minorities relative to the wages for jobs historically performed by white men. Thus, discrimination is embedded in the current wage structure of jobs (Remick 1984; Marini 1989). Continued job and occupational segregation by sex, combined with the continued systematic undervaluation ofjobs held by women and minorities, is thereby a cause of continued inequality and a form of labor market discrimination.
The argument that discrimination is the basis for the inequality of wages between men's and women's jobs is not new. In the 1922 presidential address to the British Association of Economists, F.Y. Edgeworth spoke on ''Equal Pay to Men and Women for Equal Work.'' Edgeworth outlined three major conclusions regarding wage inequality between men and women. First, that men and women work in different jobs, albeit jobs that often require similar levels of effort and skill. Second, that jobs held by women are paid far less than those held by men. Third, that removing overt discrimination would be unlikely to equalize wages for men and women fully (Edgeworth 1922). The findings of recent empirical studies have generally supported these three conclusions.
There is considerable evidence demonstrating that men and women work in different occupations. Comparisons of occupational segregation by sex in the United States since 1900 show that levels of segregation have been persistent through the 1960s and 1980s (Gross 1968; Jacobs 1989). During the 1980s more than half of the workers of one sex would have had to change occupations in order to equalize the distribution of men and women across all occupations (Jacobs 1989). Researchers using more specific job titles within firms have found that almost no men and women work together in the same job in the same firm (Bielby and Baron 1986).
On average, women continue to earn substantially less than men. Women earned 62 percent of what men earned in 1975 and just over 75 percent of what men earned in 1995 (Figart and Kahn 1997). The concentration of women in low-paying, female-dominated occupations has been found to account for a substantial portion of this income difference. The amount of the income gap between men and women explained by the sex segregation of occupations varies from 25 percent to over 33 percent across many studies of this issue (Sorensen 1986; Figart and Kahn 1997). The remainder of the difference between men's and women's average earnings is due to other factors, such as differences in the overall skills and experience individual men and women bring with them to the labor market.
Empirical studies have examined whether the gap in wages between female-dominated and male-dominated occupations is based on differences in the occupations with regard to the skills required or the work environments. Treiman and colleagues (1984), in an evaluation of the effects of differences in characteristics of male and female occupations on wages, found that ''about 40 percent of the earnings gap between male- and female-dominated occupations can be attributed to differences in job characteristics and 60 percent to differences in the rate of return on these characteristics.'' That is, he found that the premium paid for skills in male-dominated occupations was higher than that paid for the same skills in female-dominated occupations. Other research has confirmed the findings that specific skills (such as dealing with the public) or requirements (such as having a high school diploma) increase wages more in a male-dominated occupation than in a female-dominated occupation (McLaughlin 1978; Beck and Kemp 1986). Other possible explanations for differences in wages between male-dominated and female-dominated occupations—such as that female-dominated occupations have greater nonmonetary compensations (such as vacation, sick leave, flexibility in working hours) (Jencks, Perman and Rainwater 1988) or that they are more accommodating to intermittent careers (England 1982)—have not been supported by empirical studies.
The conclusion of J.S. Mill in 1865, as quoted by Edgeworth in 1922—''The remuneration of the peculiar employments of women is always, I believe, greatly below that of employments of equal skill and equal disagreeableness carried on by men.''—is similar to the conclusion reached by the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences committee report in 1981:
"[Such] differential earnings patterns have existed for many decades. They may arise in part because women and minority men are paid less than white men for doing the same (or very similar) jobs within the same firm, or in part because the job structure is substantially segregated by sex, race, and ethnicity and the jobs held mainly by women and minority men pay less than the jobs held mainly by non-minority men" (Treiman and Hartmann 1981, p.92).
The evidence is fairly conclusive that occupational-level wage discrimination exists—that is, that skills and requirements are less well rewarded in jobs held primarily by women than they are in jobs held primarily by men. Comparable worth advocates argue that applying job-evaluation methods is a viable method for reducing this form of wage discrimination. This is clarified in Helen Remick's proposed working definition of comparable worth as ''the application of a single, bias-free point factor job evaluation system within a given establishment, across job families, both to rank-order jobs and to set salaries''(1984, p.99).
Job-evaluation methods are well established and have been used for decades to establish equivalencies across jobs. Actual methods of job evaluation differ, but the usual approach is to start by describing all jobs within a given organization. Next, a list of important job requirements is developed and jobs are rated on each requirement. For example, one requirement could be the use of mathematics. In this case each job would be rated from ''low'' (e.g. addition and subtraction of whole numbers) to ''high'' (e.g., the use of differential equations). Most job-evaluation methods include job requirements such as level of education, skills, level of responsibility, and the environment in which the work is performed. Some job-evaluation methods also include such characteristics of job incumbents as average education, training, and experience. More complex job-evaluation systems also consider how jobs rank with regard to fringe benefits (e.g. sick leave), hours (e.g. shift work), training and promotion opportunities, hazards, autonomy (e.g. can leave work without permission), authority (e.g. supervises others), and organizational setting (e.g. organizational size) (see Jencks et al. 1988). After each job is rated and given a certain number of ''points'' for each requirement, the points are then added into an overall ''score'' for each job. These scores are then weighted based on the importance assigned to a particular job attribute. Each job then receives a total number of points based on all of the appropriate factors in order to compare the value to the firm of different jobs. These composite scores are then used to rank jobs in order to help determine appropriate wages (Blau and Ferber 1986). This makes it possible to compare wages paid for jobs with very different—but comparable—content. In addition to considering the training and work requirements for jobs within the firm, systems of job evaluation often also take into account whatever information is available on prevailing wages for different types of labor. The use of job evaluation is neither new nor unusual, and currently job evaluation is often used to determine pay scales by governments and by many businesses. Job evaluations are primarily used when employers cannot rely on the market to establish wages. (See Spilerman 1986, for a discussion of the types of organizations that determine wages based on nonmarket mechanisms.) Employers must determine wages, for example, when positions are filled entirely from within an organizational unit (e.g. through promotion of an existing workforce) or when they fill jobs that are unique to a particular firm. In these cases, ''going rates'' for all jobs are not always available in local labor markets.
There are at least two critical limitations to using job-evaluation methods in establishing comparable worth. First, it is difficult to eliminate the effects of past practices on the identification and the weighting of important job characteristics.
Existing job-evaluation schemes have been criticized for undervaluing, or not even considering, the skills and abilities that are emphasized in some female jobs (Beatty and Beatty 1984; Stienberg 1992). For example, at one time the coding in the job-evaluation system used in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles rated the primarily male occupation ''Dog Pound Attendant'' as requiring a higher level of complexity with regard to working with data, people, and things than the primarily female occupations of ''Nursery School Teacher'' and ''Practical Nurse''—which were rated as having minimal or no relationship with data, people, or things (Miller et al. 1980). Second, because job-evaluation methods are used within a particular firm or organization, they do not address wage inequalities across firms or organizations. This particularly limits the scope of comparable worth because, with the exception of governments (which often employ individuals across a wide range of occupational categories), most organizations are staffed by individuals in a relatively narrow span of occupations. For example, jobs in the textile and poultry-processing industries, usually held by women, and jobs in the lumber industry, usually held by men, could have the same overall scores in terms of job characteristics. However, because these jobs are usually not in the same organization, it is unlikely that job-evaluation methods could be used to equalize wages for these jobs.
Comparable-worth methods have been used in a number of legal actions in attempts to increase the equivalencies of wages for jobs held primarily by women and those held primarily by men. The outcomes of these cases have been mixed (see Remick 1984; Heen 1984; Steinberg 1987; and Figart and Kahn 1997 for reviews and discussions of cases). In the United States, the right of ''equal pay for equal work'' is provided by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. An important legal action based on the premise of comparable worth was the Supreme Court ruling in the County of Washington v Gunther, 452 U.S. 161 (1981). This ruling removed a major legal obstacle to comparable worth as the basis of equalizing wages. Although it did not endorse the comparable worth approach, it did rule that a man and woman need not do ''equal work'' in order to establish pay discrimination under Title VII (Heen 1984). Subsequent lower court rulings have not resulted in clear-cut decisions regarding comparable worth, and at present
it seems unlikely that, in the United States, court decisions will mandate the comparable-worth approach. Legal and legislative actions based on comparable worth and pay equity also have emerged in countries other than the United States. Canada included a provision for equal pay for work of equal value in the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1977 (see Cadieux 1984; and Ontario Pay Equity Commission 1998). The implementation of this legislation has resulted in significant decisions regarding the need to increase wages in female-dominated occupations—both in private industry and in the government. However, the implementation of these decisions has not been without difficulty. For example, the government and the government-workers union of the Northwest Territories were, in early 1998, in disagreement with regard to whether the evaluation system used by the government to establish comparable worth was biased (Government of the Northwest Territories 1998).
Despite its limitations and difficulties in implementation, the concept of comparable worth as a basis for pay equity remains important in public policy initiatives. The National Committee on Pay Equity (1999), the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (1999), and other organizations provide information and support for advocates of comparable worth. As one approach to increasing pay equity, comparable-worth applications have the potential for identifying and correcting one of the most persistent bases for the disparity between earnings for majority men and earnings for women and minorities.