Comparable Worth New Directions for Research (1985) / Chapter Skim
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Jobs, Job Status, and Women's Gains from Affirmative Action: Implications for Comparable Worth
Jobs, Job Status, and Women's Gains from Affirmative Action: Implications for Comparable Worth
Pages 116-136
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From page 116... ...
In particular, the issue of comparable worth poses the question of whetherjobs held predominantly by women are undervalued, and thus undercompensated, relative to jobs of comparable worth that are held predominantly by men. Consequently, the study of pay equity must consider how the level of compensation forjobs is determined.
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From page 117... ...
Third, reform efforts to implement job evaluation, even in the context of a strong aff~rrnative action program, may not overcome the salary disadvantages of female jobs and, most perniciously, may inadvertently serve to legitimate traditional values under the mask of scientific procedure. These findings suggest that developing a comparable worth strategy may be necessa~y to improve women's earnings and that such a strategy, which requires changing job structures, is likely to be difficult to implement.
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From page 118... ...
to describe jobs in terms of averages: average tenure, average earnings, percentage of college graduates, percentage female, and so forth. These analyses took jobs as the units of analysis in order to discover relationships among the attributes of jobs.
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From page 119... ...
The first and second affirmative action programs increasingly reduced the female disadvantage: from 46 percent in 1969 to 39 percent in 1972 and 23 percent in 1975. Female college graduates gained even more, going from a 36 percent disadvantage for new entrants before affirmative action to only a 3 percent disadvantage by 1975.
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From page 120... ...
Further analyses indicate that newly entering women received great increases in job status from the affirmative action program, but more-senior women continued in the same jobs or in jobs of similar low status. The job status system created an important obstacle to earnings gains ~ .
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From page 121... ...
To the extent that they occur, they pose a serious challenge to our notion of a fixed organizational structure, for they suggest that old job duties or old ways of organizing duties into jobs disappear and new duties or new ways of organizing duties appear in the form of new jobs. If jobs and job statuses are as important as they appear to be in affecting earnings, this degree of change in the job structure will have important implications for any program designed to affect earnings and employment outcomes.
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From page 122... ...
Of course, affirmative action, job evaluation, organizational contraction, and organizational growth were important changes over these periods, but they are not sufficient to explain the changes observed. The 1962-1969 period in particular is largely unexplained by these changes, since most of them occurred after this period.
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From page 123... ...
Furthermore, the organization shifted from a traditional job status system to a job evaluation system during this period (in 19721. In addition, an affirmative action program begun in 1970 was made even stronger in 1973 developments that we would expect to change the relative standing of jobs filled with large proportions of women and minorities.
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From page 124... ...
Despite considerable changes in economic circumstances and organizational practices over these periods, job salaries remained extremely stable for nonmanagement and foreman levels. This stability is particularly striking, for it occurred despite an explicit effort to reform the traditional job status system by implementing job evaluation at foreman levels and above.
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From page 125... ...
The affirmative action program seems to have had great success in increasing the number of integrated jobs . However, despite these gains, most jobs were unaffected.
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From page 126... ...
Percentage female had a strong significant negative relationship with job salaries in all years, even after controlling for human capital composition. At the nonmanagement level in 1965, jobs were paid $21 less for each additional female percentage unit, so that the regression estimates that jobs with 100 percent females were paid $2,100 less than all-male jobs, a figure very close to the real difference between the job salaries of all-male and allfemale jobs.
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From page 127... ...
43.1 % 39.3 % 40.3 % 37.3 % Standardized coefficients Percentage college graduates .416 .401 .390 .370 Tenure —.248 - .376 .382 .231 Percentage minority —.209 - .276 - .172 - .278 Percentage female - .369 - .339 - .258 - .231 Foreman Percentage college 7.116*
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From page 128... ...
95.4% 91.4% 83.2% 90.9% Standardized coefficients Percentage college graduates - .081 - .053 .010 - .043 Tenure .065 .043 .186 .081 Percentage minority —.035 - .078 - .026 .001 Percentage female - .042 .111 - .152 - .014 Job status .973 .894 .812 .949 n= Partitioning of variance from Table 5 Variance (%) 44 59 53 52 Unique Total Unique Total Unique Total Unique Total Demographic variables 1.5 40.0 2.1 46.7 5.2 41.5 1.2 32.4 Status 55.4 93.9 44.7 89.3 41.7 78.0 58.5 89.7 Shared 38.5 44.6 36.3 31.2 Total 95.4 91.4 83.2 90.9 *
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From page 129... ...
Job evaluation created a status hierarchy that continues to mediate much of the effect of female composition on earnings in the same way that the traditional status system did. Job evaluation, even in the context of a strong affirmative action program, maintains and possibly reinforces much of the earnings differences among male and female jobs.
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From page 130... ...
However, the affirmative action program had a strong effect on this result. Over the two periods in the 1970s, the negative influence of percentage female continually decreased at the nonmanagement level, and at the foreman level its influence vanished in the 1969-1972 period and actually became significantly positive in the final period.
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From page 131... ...
42.7% 24.7% 12.9% 45.3% Standardized coefficients Percentage college graduates .655 .466 .382 .665 Tenure .083 - .050 - .132 - .036 Percentage minority — .121 .075 - .073 Percentage female - .057 - .131 - .081 - .117 n= 76 101 85 81 Foreman Percentage college graduates Tenure Percentage minority Percentage female Constant Variance explained (R2) Standardized coefficients Percentage college graduates Tenure Percentage minority Percentage female .439*
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From page 132... ...
Our awareness of the traditional historical relationship between job status and promotions suggests that one must be wary about whether the new pattern will endure. CONCLUSIONS This study sought to discover how jobs and job statuses affect women's earnings and how they affect women's gains from an affirmative action program.
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From page 133... ...
However, job evaluation does not necessarily contribute to gains for women. The findings indicate that job evaluation, even in the context of a strong affirmative action program, does not diminish the relationship between female composition and job salary veer much.
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From page 134... ...
Similarly, the effect of female composition on salaries has previously been shown for occupations but not forjobs, and it has not been possible before to relate it so clearly to job evaluation status categories. However, regardless of generalizability, the primary value of these findings is in suggesting some issues to consider in assessing the effectiveness of affirmative action programs and in developing comparable worth strategies.
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From page 135... ...
In the absence of data for analyzing the job evaluation process in detail, this study offers empirical support to the warning of the National Research Council report: jobs and job evaluation programs, even in the context of very serious and effective affirmative action programs, may partially undermine the goals of affirmative action and legitimize these inequalities. Given the difficulty of criticizing job evaluation programs, this may be a serious obstacle to preserving panty after the impetus for aff~rrnative action programs is reduced.
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From page 136... ...
1979 Job Evaluation: An Analytic Review. Committee on Occupational Classification and Analysis.
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