Evaluating Work and Comparable Worth

Policy debates over comparable worth have directed the attention of sociologists to questions of how employers evaluate the worth of jobs and determine interjob wage differences. We discuss techniques of job evaluation, developed primarily by industrial psychologists. Job evaluation can embody some kinds of gender bias; nonetheless, it is useful in detecting gender discrimination of other types. The methods and findings of job evaluation are then situated within theoretical positions in sociology: the global theories of functionalism and conflict theory, and the middle range theory of the new structuralism in stratification research. The neoclassical economic view on comparable worth is contrasted with the sociological view.