PERCEPTION OF EQUITY IN COMPENSATION PRACTICES: A RESEARCH NOTE

As women's understanding of work‐place discrimination evolved, their attention shifted from the problem of equal pay for equal work to the issue of comparable pay. This shift was premised on the realisation that even though the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was correcting pay inequities in substantially equivalent jobs held by both men and women, most female‐dominated jobs had no equivalent male comparisons and thus, were outside the scope of the Equal Pay Act. Mahoney (1983) defines Comparable Worth as “comparable pay for jobs of comparable worth.” (p.14). At the core of this definition is the contention that differences in pay that are disproportionate to differences in the worth of jobs amount to wage discrimination.