I’m always hearing it tossed around as fact that women are paid less than men for the same work. Most folks seem to treat this as common knowledge. Seems, then, that the smart thing for businesses to do would be to hire women exclusively. So, is it a bunch of hooey? –RevMarTye, Houston, TX
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If you want to be literal about it, yes, it’s a bunch of hooey. Paying women less than men for the same work violates U.S. law. The federal government being the model of efficiency that it is, we can be sure this type of discrimination has been totally stamped out. One may object: But everybody knows women get paid less than men! Of course, but the question was about pay for the same work. The thing is, women, in some people’s eyes, don’t do the same work as men. They stay home having babies and knitting dirndls while the men are out hunting bear and fending off the Visigoths, so naturally they get paid less. You may detect a note of sarcasm here, but dressed up in slightly more refined terms this is largely the argument used to explain wage differentials today.
Whatever the effectiveness of equal pay legislation, it didn’t attack what many felt was the core problem: occupations historically dominated by women (e.g., nursing, teaching) pay less well than those dominated by men. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on sex, among other things, seemed to offer a way to address this issue. The Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII, pay differences for dissimilar jobs were possibly evidence of discrimination. However, proving one’s case in the absence of clear intent turned out to be difficult. Employers have successfully argued that if they pay the market rate for different jobs they’re not discriminating, even if the market decrees higher wages for jobs usually held by men. Women’s advocates have proposed the concept of “comparable worth,” which attempts to equate dissimilar jobs based on the required level of skill, effort, responsibility, and so on, but this notion has not caught on with U.S. courts or legislators.
