COMPARABLE WORTHProponents of using comparable worth to es-
tablish 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 deter-
mine 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 re-
sponse 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 rela-
tive 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 of jobs held by women and minori-
ties, 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 inequali-
ty 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 gen-
erally supported these three conclusions.
There is considerable evidence demonstrat-
ing that men and women work in different occupa-
tions. 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). Re-
searchers 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 substan-
tially 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 be-
tween men and women explained by the sex segre-
gation of occupations varies from 25 percent to
over 33 percent across many studies of this issue
(Sorensen 1986; Figart and Kahn 1997). The re-
mainder of the difference between men’s and
women’s average earnings is due to other factors,
such as differences in the overall skills and experi-
ence 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 differ-
ences in characteristics of male and female occu-
pations on wages, found that ‘‘about 40 percent of
the earnings gap between male- and female-domi-
nated 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 occu-
pations. Other research has confirmed the find-
ings 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-dominat-
ed occupation (McLaughlin 1978; Beck and Kemp
1986). Other possible explanations for differences