FIXING WOMENS WAGES - THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COMPARABLE WORTH POLICIES

The author discusses some problems that can prevent comparable worth l egislation from achieving meaningful gender wage equity, which she def ines as the elimination of gender as a factor in wage setting. She the n tests the comparable worth policies of two Canadian provinces agains t the same set of job content data from a 1988 survey of health care w orkers. Whereas Mantioba's comparable worth policy, she finds, would a chieve gender wage equity if applied to this set of jobs, Ontario's wo uld not, and would even result in new and capricious instances of ineq uity. She argues that continual scrutiny, including comparative analys is, of comparable worth policies is needed not only in order to identi fy the most effective policy designs, but also to guard against effort s to undercut legislation through manipulation of implementation proce dures.