Women, Work, and Wages Equal Pay for Jobs of Equal Value (1981) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
3 Wage Differentials and Institutional Features of Labor Markets
3 Wage Differentials and Institutional Features of Labor Markets
Pages 44-68
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 44... ...
LABOR MARKETS Of today's employed civilian labor force of approximately 100 million, about 90 percent work for wages or salaries (the rest are self-employed)
|
From page 45... ...
; union agreements that determine hiring rules and pay rates; and the segmentation of labor markets into noncompeting groups, largely on the basis of the sex, race, and ethnic~ty of workers. While institutional economists acknowledge that wage rates observed in the market reflect the forces of supply and demand, they point out that supply and demand are themselves strongly affected by institutional factors.
|
From page 46... ...
. Once an employee enters a large~scale establishment, he or she becomes part of an "internal" labor market in which job openings are usually filled from within and workers are usually deployed in accordance with established rules and procedures rather than in direct competition with workers in the '`external'' labor market.
|
From page 47... ...
Industries that require highly educated workers, such as computer manufacture and service, insurance, and finance as well as most of the public service sector, also tend to have well-developed internal labor markets with established channels for advancement and predictable work rules and hence are also part of the primary segment. The remaining jobs in the economy constitute what has been awed the secondary segment.
|
From page 48... ...
Although primary jobs are thought to prevail in large firms and industries with a historical pattern of structured internal labor markets, and secondary jobs to prevail in enterprises with no formal internal labor markets' both types of jobs may exist side by side. For example, service jobs in hospitals exist alongside medical and nursing jobs; and janitonal and packaging jobs in large firms exist alongside skilled craft jobs.
|
From page 49... ...
Table 12 shows considerable variation in a sample of occupational wage rates paid by surveyed establishments in one metropolitan area, Newark, New Jersey. For this sam 2 The following summary of the empirical literature on labor market ~cg~DcDtation relics busby on Edwards (1979~.
|
From page 50... ...
fall outside the schema (Edwards, 1979:166~. The empirical literature further suggests that various labor market processes operate differently in the two segments, although Cain (1976)
|
From page 51... ...
Such findings are consistent with the hypothesis that different labor market segments operate in different ways, but they are at odds tenth the general tenor of the neoclassical human capital mode! of the labor market.
|
From page 52... ...
Hence, even when occupations are integrated by sex, the jobs men and women actually hold are segregated by sex.4 Because custom and tradition have in the past assigned subordinate social roles to minorities and women and because labor markets tend to incorporate, mirror, and perpetuate such roles, institutional theorists would expect minorities and women to hold lowpaying jobs with limited opportunities. As we concluded in Chapter 2, the evidence on the differences in earnings between men and women suggests both that they cannot be satisfactorily accounted for on the basis of worker characteristics thought to affect productivity and that job segregation contributes to the lower earnings of women.
|
From page 53... ...
etc. It is difficult to assess the relative importance of the choices women make in the labor market and of the factors affecting their choices.5 5 An extensive literature exists on some of the relevant topics, especially socialization.
|
From page 54... ...
Study of Income Dynamics, however, Corcoran (1979) found that continuity of work experience did not seem to have a large effect on earnings differentials between men and women, and, in particular, that labor force withdrawals did not usually lower women's wager their skills did not in general atrophy or depreciate while they were out of the labor market.
|
From page 55... ...
Using data on professional employees of a large corporation, they showed that adjusting earnings on the basis of a very good measure of job-related labor market experience plus measures of post-high-school education. rate of absenteeism, marital status, college Seld of study.
|
From page 56... ...
UNDERPAYMENT OF WOMEN'S WORK The third explanation for the lower pay rates of jobs held mainly by women is that women's work is underpaid because women do That is, that the same work would be paid more if it were done by men. Again, the evidence is sparse, but in several documented cases pay rates were shown to have been influenced by the sex composition of the work force as well as by the content of jobs.
|
From page 57... ...
In this context we would regard jobs held mainly or entirely by women as underpaid if their pay rates are lower than those of jobs with the same scores held mainly or entirely by men. Several examples exist of fimns that pay, or have paid, jobs held mainly by women less than jobs with similar job evaluation scores held mainly by men.
|
From page 58... ...
, the pay rates of some jobs held mainly by women have been raised. A selection of the job titles compared in one case is shown in Table IS; similar jobs were matched and the issue in contention was their relative worth.
|
From page 59... ...
To assess this claim, the study compared the pa, rates of jobs held mainly by women with the pay rates of jobs of "comparable worth" held mainly by men. A total of 121 positions, in which at least 70 percent of incumbents were of the same sex, were chosen for evaluation.
|
From page 60... ...
60 ;^ ~: A, r D .o es ~ oo _ O O' Ed Os I: 6 5 MU 3 E D _ ~ .~ ~ ~_ _ L .~ o it 3 A, Z ~ o .eii O I ' _ 8 6E; 9, ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ r -~01~8 ·8 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ en ~ Hi ~0 e to ~ to ~ oo ~ e "E _ _ ______ ~ .
|
From page 61... ...
If institutional factors such as those reviewed here do operate in the labor market, then relying solely on area wage rates to establish pay rates for a particuisr find will incorporate those differentials into that firm's wage structure. Those differentials will be based on all factors, including productivity and discrimination, that create differentials in earnings between women and men in the wider market.
|
From page 62... ...
1977; Stevenson, 1978~. This is so because internal labor markets in large firms typically function with the aid of work rules that are bureaucratically enforced and uniformly applied and administered; because these rules specify that everyone in the same job category should be treated similarly; and because sex, race, and ethnic differences have recently come to be perceived as unfair (and indeed illegal, with the passage of the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act)
|
From page 63... ...
Moreover, since the persistence of discrimination over time cannot be explained by conventional models of the labor market (which posit perfect mobility, information, and access) , most theories of discrimination incorporate departures from these assumptions in an attempt to better represent the actual behavior of labor markets.
|
From page 64... ...
As Cain (1976) has noted, the human capital approach, the approach most commonly used in developing models to measure the extent of discrimination In the labor market, does not provide information about the possible mechanisms of discrimination.
|
From page 65... ...
Wages are higher in some jobs and lower in others than they would be in the absence of job segregation. In particular, the wage rates of jobs traditionally held by women are depressed relative to what they would be if women had equal opportunity in the labor market.
|
From page 66... ...
Women and minority workers can be trained in new fields, for example, but if employers refuse to hire them, market outcomes will not be altered. Strategies that focus on improving the operation of labor market~by increasing the information available about jobs, for example assume that both demand and supply are adequate so that once workers and employers find out about each other they can come to mutually beneficial teens.
|
From page 67... ...
For this reason and because, given the complexity of labor markets' a comparable worth strategy may have unanticipated and unintended effects, it cannot be viewed as a panacea. Raising the wages of jobs held by women through a comparable worth strategy might have various effects.
|
From page 68... ...
While further study of the possible effects of a comparable worth strategy is certainly required, the committee believes that policies de~sed to alter pay structures so that jobs are rewarded in a nondiscriminatory manner that is, commensurate with their demands and requirements rather than in ways based on the sex, race, or ethnicity of those who hold the~are clearly desirable. It is not, however, an easy task to ascertain for any particular job whether its pay rate includes discriminatory elements.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.