Women, Work, and Wages Equal Pay for Jobs of Equal Value (1981) / Chapter Skim
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4 Wage-Adjustment Approaches to Overcoming Discrimination
4 Wage-Adjustment Approaches to Overcoming Discrimination
Pages 69-90
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From page 69... ...
When women are concentrated disproportionately in the low-paying jobs within a firm, however, the question anses: can differences In the average pay of men and women be accounted for entirely by differences in their access to or preference for high-paying and low-pay~ng jobs, or are the pay rates influenced by the sex composition of jobs? In the latter case the remedy would be to adjust the pay rates of jobs so as to remo`,e what would be considered the discriminatory component.
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From page 70... ...
Moreover, not all employers who use job evaluation plans base pay rates solely on the job worth hierarchy implied by the job evaluation plan in use; in such cases inferences regarding possible discrimination must rest not on spec'fic instances of underpayment of jobs relative to their "worth" but on a pattern of underpayment for jobs held mainly by women or minorities. To cope with these complications, we explore two modifications to the conventional job evaluation approach: a multiple regression approach that includes "percent female" among the variables used to predict pay rates, and the use of pay rates of white men in jobs held mainly by white men as a standard of equitable pay.
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From page 71... ...
2 are described; the descnptions are then rated or evaluated according to one or more "compensable factors" (features defined as legitimate bases for pay differentials) ; the ratings are added in some way to create a total score, sometimes called a job worth score; and the scores are use~sometimes alone and sometimes with other informatio~to assign the jobs to pay classes.3 Particularly in large firms with large internal labor markets, it is not always evident how to set pay rates for different jobs.
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From page 72... ...
Job evaluation plans developed in this way necessarily produce hierarchies of job worth that are closely related to existing pay hierarchies: that is what they are designed to do. Another way to develop a factor point job evaluation system is to define a priori a set of factors and factor weights that expresses what the employer believes are legitimate bases of pay differentials.4 In both methods of developing factor point systems job worth is defined by the factors that measure it, and jobs are assumed to deserve equal pay if they have equal total scores on the job worth scale.
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From page 73... ...
Specifically, actual pay rates could be compared with the pay rates that would prevail if jobs were paid according to their job worth scores, and the difference taken as a measure of possible discrimination. Furthermore, if the difference between actual and predicted pay rates were shown to be correlated tenth the sex, race, or ethnic composition of occupational categories, then a strong suspicion would be created that pay practices are discriminatory, and appropriate action could be taken.
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From page 74... ...
And as we have already noted, the principal method for deriving factor weights in most currently used job evaluation plans pegs them to current pay rates, therby reflecting existing pay differences between men and women (and between minority and nonminority) workers.
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From page 75... ...
Despite the fact that most job evaluation plans appear to tap the same basic features of jobs skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions the particular operational indicators of the factors may vary more widely, a possibility with important consequences. For example, "skill" Is sometimes measured operationally by the amount of experience required to become fully trained in a job and sometimes by the amount of formal education required to qualify for a job.
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From page 76... ...
It is hardly optimal to use job evaluation scores as a standard against which to assess the legitimacy of existing pay differences among jobs if the job evaluation scores themselves are designed to replicate as closely as possible existing pay differences. On the other hand, using existing wages to derive factor weights has the advantage, from the point of view of the employer and many em ' In a typical prediction operose, a set of jobs has a~rcrage ~gc rates Y and preliminary, arbitranly specified scores on job worth factors J' (i = 1, .
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From page 77... ...
One can also question to what extent sex stereotypes may affect the evaluation process. That is' are jobs held by women evaluated differently from jobs held by men, even when their content is virtually identical?
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From page 78... ...
One possibility would be to carry out job evaluations on the basis of job descriptions only, omitting job titles from the description. MULTIPLE JOB EVALUATION PLANS IN A SINGLE FIRM Another source of difficulty in using job evaluation plans to assess complaints of pay discrimination is the tendency of firms to use different job evaluation plans for diffcrcut categories of workers.
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From page 79... ...
The development of different job evaluation plans for different types of jobs appears to have two explanations: first, plans were onginally developed for blue-collar jobs and only later for white-collar office and professional and executive jobs; second, different types of jobs are widely believed tO have vent different job characteristics. For example, manual dexterity, a factor thought to be unponant for most blue collar jobs and some office jobs, is nonnally not thought to be important for professional and executive jobs.
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From page 80... ...
a policy-captunng approach, in which existing pay rates are predicted from a set of compensable factors Ma multiple regression procedures and weights are denved from the regression model. In the latter case, the adequacy of the predicted scores as the basis for assigning jobs to pay grades or for assessing whether jobs are "underpaid" or "overpaid" depends on the adequacy of the statistical mode!
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From page 81... ...
Still, using job evaluation scores to determine pay rates wall generally go some way toward reducing discriminatory differences in pay when they exist. It may be possible to improve fob evaluation glans.
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From page 82... ...
Considering their potential usefulness in resolving wage discrimination disputes and the growing interest in that use, further research on techniques of job evaluation would be very valuable. STATISTICAL APPROACHES TO ASSESSING PAY RATES The comparable worth approach attempts to use job evaluation procedures to determine "fair" rates of pay for jobs, but as we note above, that approach involves the difficulties inherent in using the job evaluation plans that are currently available.
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From page 83... ...
, the conventional approach to denying factor weights for job evaluation plans is to estimate a regression equation of the forth y=a+~:bili (~) over a set of occupations in a Fin., where Y is the average pay rate of each occupation, the Ji are potential compensable features of jobs (measures of skill, effort, responsibility, working conditions, etc.)
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From page 84... ...
These coefficients differ from the corresponding coefficients in eq. I, the conventional job evaluation equation, in that they are adjusted for the propensity of characteristics that distinguish between jobs held mainly by women and jobs held mainly by men to be heavily weighted as a consequence of the strong negative association in most firms between the percent female and the average earnings of jobs; the explicit inclusion of percent female in the equation is what adjusts the weights.
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From page 85... ...
Interpreting the residual as indicating damnation, then, requires Other the monk Ed clearly untenable assumption that all relevant factors have been measured, and measured without error, or a determination that discrimination ~ lively. ~ our jUd - Cut, the proper interpretation in light of the c~idencc reduced in Chapters 2 and 3 is to treat the unexplained differences in average pay rates between men "d women "d between mDontics and nonrrunontics as indicating the probability of disenmizutory protest unless the contrary can be shown.
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From page 86... ...
Experience that incumbents happen to have that is not required by the job is ordinarily considered irrelevant, while required experience is usually included as a job element, one of the lit If job evaluation procedures are to.be used for the resolution of claims of pay discrimination, however, their usefulness would be enhanced by including those worker characteristics regarded as legitimate compensable factors. JOBS HELD BY WHITE MEbt AS A STANDARD We now turn to a different approach, the use of features of jobs held mainly by white men as a standard for assessing the fairness of the pay rates of other jobs.
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From page 87... ...
. USING STATISTICAL PROCEDURES TO CORRECT DISCRIMINATORY PAY RATES It may be possible to use the sorts of models outlined ~ the previous Actions to make adjustments in discriminatory pay rates, although mechanical application of these approaches without careful consideration of the measurement issues noted In this chapter would be iB-adv~sed.
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From page 88... ...
The first modification is to use factor weights derived for white men in jobs held mainly by white men as the standard applied to all jobs. This technique has the advantage of adjusting all pay rates to a level commensurate with the highest returns currently offered, which is probably psychologically preferable but has the corresponding disadvantage of increasing the cost of the total pay package (unless, of course, the pay rates for all jobs are reduced by some constant)
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From page 89... ...
Of course, since the legitimate compensable factors will typically be correlated with sex composition, the resulting zero-order correlation between sex composition and earnings ordmaniy will not be exactly zero, although it usually will be reduced. Me basic difference between the first procedure and its modifications and the second is that the former adjust all pay rates to the policy line defined by a job evaluation formula, while the latter permits pay rates to vary around the policy line, with a sole constraint: the Sedations from the policy line must be uncorrelated with the sex composition of occupational categories.
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From page 90... ...
Research on the possibility that stereotypes are operating in the evaluation of jobs as well as research on the actual characteristics of jobs held by different groups is extremely important in ~mprowng job evaluation systems. In addition, further research on the discriminatory components of pay rates is needed.
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