The non-comparability of the ?comparable worth? doctrine: An inappropriate standard for determining sex discrimination in pay

Abstract

This article critically evaluates the legal doctrine of "comparable worth," including recent federal court decisions related to it. The doctrine mandates equal pay for jobs requiring comparable--but not equal--skill, effort and responsibility. As a standard for determining whether sex discrimination in pay has occurred, comparable worth is an economically defective concept and inappropriate to the task.The comparable worth standard is based solely on job content, measured in terms of the internal characteristics of the work performed and conditions of work. This standard completely ignores external market forces which affect the supply of labor and the pay that employers must offer to attract and retain their workers. For example, although female workers receive only about 60 percent of the pay earned by their male counterparts, between two-thirds and three-quarters of this male-female differential in pay is associated with gender differences in the nature and availability of labor. The importance of external market forces in establishing the "value" of jobs is best demonstrated in higher education by comparing the labor markets for and salaries of various academic disciplines. The observed differences in academic salaries by discipline are not the result of job discrimination but, rather, reflect differences in the opportunity costs facing faculty in terms of the employment alternatives outside of higher education. Even though significant differences in salary levels exist between disciplines, higher education is still plagued by chronic and substantial labor market imbalances. These imbalances are an indication that salary levels have not varied sufficiently to fully reflect external market forces.