Essay on Analysis of Comparable Worth and the Common Good

Essay on Analysis of Comparable Worth and the Common Good

The Federal Government has been struggling for almost four decades now to close the gap between the wages of men and women. In the 1960's, women were paid approximately 60 cents for every dollar men received for their work. Although progress has been made since Congress passed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, equality has not yet been achieved. Today, thirty–six years later, women still earn only seventy–six percent of the wages of men.



Early studies found convincing evidence that women were being construed as inferior when it came to their work. Jobs that were dominated by women were paid less than male–dominated jobs, not because they were intrinsically worth less, but because they were dominated by women (Treiman & Hartmann, 1981:93; ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...Jobs are judged similar, thus comparable, based on composite ratings of requirements such as skill, effort, responsibility, or other factors valued by an organization. All in all, comparable worth is necessary because discriminatory pay practices of the past were not fully addressed by equal employment opportunity legislation, and thus effects have been perpetuated by conventional pay administration practices (Taylor, 1989). Comparable worth rests on the theory that pay differentials are caused by sex discrimination. It proposes that sexual segregation in jobs has unjustly depressed women workers' wages. According to Wittig (1989), we may look at how this segregation has contributed to the wage gap from two viewpoints. Firstly, a significant portion of the sex pay gap has undoubtedly been caused by job placement discrimination, which has placed women into less skilled, less demanding jobs. Secondly, the gap may be caused by "female" jobs being assigned lower pay, even when the jobs require skill equal to that in "male" jobs. There are several ways that this discrimination may be sustained: 1) job segregation related to prejudice by employers, consumers, and co–workers; 2) devaluation of jobs performed primarily by women and minority men; and 3) women and minority men's job choices, assertiveness about pay, and other group tendencies (Wittig, 1989). So, how does one go about achieving comparable worth in their organization, you may bee wondering? First, a method must be

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