Book description
"Doing Comparable Worth" is the first empirical study of the actual process of attempting to translate into reality the idea of equal pay for work of equal value. This political ethnography documents a large project undertaken by the state of Oregon to evaluate 35,000 jobs of state employees, identify gender-based…
Why read it?
1 author picked Doing Comparable Worth as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
How can we remedy the fact that wages in predominantly female jobs (e.g., secretaries) have been devalued historically?
For comparable worth advocates, women should be paid a wage equivalent to men who work in a different job with similar skills and experience. But how do we evaluate and rank skills in different occupations to create equivalence? Sociologist Joan Acker takes us through two 1980s comparable worth evaluation processes to answer this question.
Her thought-provoking research demonstrates that the evaluation process itself was laden with gendered assumptions about the value of different skills. It also helps us understand how we can…
From Jennifer's list on women’s rights in the American workplace.
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