Women`s Economic Roles

Women 's Economic Roles Page 1

The Future of the Battle for Pay Equity

Pay equity or comparable worth is a movement that set out to abolish the gender wage gap (Margaret Hallock , 2000 , 2 . 1963 saw the passage of the Equal Pay Act that guaranteed equal pay for equal work , years later the wage gap between sexes still exists as evidenced by the latest Government Accountability Office report . Margaret Hallock said that the gender wage gap has been one of the more durable features of the wage structure in North America

(4 . Simply put , despite the decade old fight for pay equity , the reality of gender wage gap is still very real

Just what is pay equity and what are its chances of success in the present time ? Pay equity begun as a fight to go beyond the reality of unequal pay for the same jobs and unequal access to jobs , above all it sought to bring dignity and respect for what women do in the world of work . Predominantly , pay equity involves breaking down jobs into the skills that are required of the job holder like education , special abilities or experience and how difficult or complex that job is (does it require hard physical labor , manual dexterity , responsibility for important decisions or for supervising the work of others and so on then compare how these skills and requirements are valued in dollar amounts in different jobs . This in turn would clearly identify the discrepancy in the pay of women to that of men , wherein women are said to always earn less than men do . Most of the campaigns for pay equity resulted in pay increases for women , but the upgrades often fell short of the original expectations (Margaret Hallock , 2000 , 2 . This goes to show that not belittling the achievements of the pay equity movement , at present to close the gender wage gap would take more than this Women 's Economic Roles Page 2

But not all was lost , because of the pay equity movement , greater consciousness of women 's conditions in the workplace came upfront , it empowered a generation of new leaders and brought gender issues in the realm of consciousness of the public and sprung a widespread debate on the nature of the gender wage gap . What the movement accomplished was setting the stage for the next step in the fight for the gender wage gap

Historically , women have been undervalued and underpaid in the workplace due to discrimination . A by Richard Anker discussed the theories behind the discrimination of women in the workplace . The neo-classical /human capital theories stress the lower levels of female human capital both in terms of what women bring to the labor market (e .g . less education ) and what they acquire after joining it (less experience than men because of taking time out for marriage and rearing children . According to these theories , women rightfully receive lower pay than men because of their lower productivity . Furthermore , this theory also posits that...