Describes strategies used over the past decade to address inequities between women and men in the areas of salary, promotions, and participation in faculty affairs and governance at Arizona State University. (GC)

Faculty women have had limited success in winning redress for employment discrimination in hiring, salary, promotion, and tenure. The burdens in time and money faced by those seeking remedies make litigation accessible to only a few, leaving internal institutional reform as the only means of moving toward sex equity. (Author/GC)

Describes authors' own experiences and strategies used in advocating for faculty women confronting sex discrimination at the University of Cincinnati. Highlights both positive results and negative paradoxes that resulted from organized efforts to achieve equality in the areas of salary, merit pay, career mobility, reappointment, promotion and…

Discusses ways in which historical wage structures still influence current salaries and underpay for female-dominated jobs. Examines the origins of the California State Civil Service's compensation structure, and finds that gender discrimination explicitly lowered wages for female-dominated jobs. Provides quantitative and qualitative evidence of…

Examines the following possible sources of measurement error in pay analysis and proposes methods to alleviate the problems: (1) choice of the number and type of job factors; (2) method of assigning values to each job factor; (3) method of selecting factor weights; and (4) political modifications made when a plan is implemented. (JS)

Reviews evidence of sex bias in job evaluation judgments and analyzes research methods used to study the issue. Explores the following types of bias: (1) direct; (2) indirect; and (3) sex of rater. Findings indicate evidence of indirect bias, showing that high paying jobs tend to be evaluated higher than those with low pay. (JS)

Describes the development of a job evaluation plan by the University of Minnesota based on employee values of job worth. Items for the point-factor plan were selected by employee committees, grouped into factors, and weighted by means of a general employee survey. Discusses the plan's use in implementing comparable worth. (JS)

Addresses the role of comparison processes in the persistence of the gender wage gap, its toleration by those disadvantaged by it, and resistance to comparable worth as a corrective strategy. Argues that gender segregation and undercompensation for women's jobs leads women to use different comparison standards when evaluating what they deserve.…

Discusses ways to close the gap between the courts' approach to applying Federal law to sex-based and race-based wage discrimination and the law's potential to change wage inequities. Discusses the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Explores ways the court applies these laws. (JS)

Surveys theories in labor economics about how the female labor supply is affected by the wage offers that women receive. Summarizes the implications concerning expected effects of comparable worth wage adjustments on female labor supply. Examines empirical evidence pertaining to the theory of female labor supply. (JS)

Provides different perspectives on comparable worth issues. Covers the following topics: (1) competing explanations for the wage gap; (2) indirect approaches to wage equity; (3) the need for a direct approach to wage equity; (4) job evaluation; (5) application of comparable worth principles to compensation systems; and (6) strategies for adopting…

Reviews economists' views about how the economy works, from which conclusions opposing comparable worth are drawn. Discusses factors that have been omitted from economists' views--social and psychological factors that affect behavior in the workplace, permit and encourage discrimination, and have an effect on the distribution of jobs and wages.…

Discusses how gender differences in the value of pay, based on relative deprivation theory, explain women's paradoxical contentment with lower wages. Presents a model of pay satisfaction to integrate value-based and comparative-referent explanations of the relationship between gender and pay satisfaction. Discusses economic approaches to the…

Examines wage-setting policies as different conceptualizations of fairness. Focuses on comparable worth as an alternative to existing wage-setting policies. Analyzes the contributions of social psychology research on distributive justice and procedural justice to understanding the determination of job worth and the dynamics of implementing…

Integrates the major conclusions of the papers on comparable worth in this special issue, and identifies additional relevant issues. Covers the following major topics: (1) history and conceptual issues; (2) social psychological aspects to pay equity; (3) job evaluation issues and applications; and (4) policy implementation and implications. (JS)