The comparable-worth story.

The Comparable-Worth Story

THE National Organization for Women (NOW) and other feminist organizations advocate laws requiring employers to pay people according to a principle of "comparable worth' (defined, of course, by a government bureaucracy rather than by the market). They justify such laws by pointing to the fact that women on average earn about 59 per cent of what men earn. But this figure, although accurate, is misleading. Broken down by age groups, the data tell a very different story.

According to a study by economists John Raisian, Michael Ward, and Finis Welch, women just out of school earn almost as much as men, but as they get older the earnings gap widens. For example, in 1982, women under twenty who worked full time earned 96 per cent as much as men the same age. By age 25 to 34, women working full time earned 72 per cent as much as men in the same age group. By age 45 to 54, they earned only 55 per cent as much. The reason: Women interrupt their careers to care for husbands and children. Using data from the 1970s, the authors showed that by the time women had been out of school for six years, they had worked on average 30 per cent less than men. After 16 years out of school, they had worked only half as much.

This time out of the labor force makes women riskier for employers to hire and train, and prevents them from acquiring skills at the same rate as men.

The constancy of the 59 per cent figure over the last few decades also hides some real progress in women's wages. Most of the women who have entered or re-entered the labor force in the last thirty years have had little work experience, and less education than average. Therefore, they have held down the average wage for women. When the ratio of women's to men's wages is corrected for these "compositional' effects, it proves to have risen by about 12 per cent since 1960, according to a Rand Corporation study.

Moreoever, the earnings gap will probably shrink even more in the future as women change their working patterns. They are already interrupting their careers less than they used to and are entering higher-paying professional and technical occupations traditionally dominated by men. According to the study by Raisian, Ward, and Welch, 14 per cent of lawyers in 1982 were women, up from only 5.6 per cent in 1971. During the same period, women bank officers and finance managers went from 18.8 to 35.3 per cent, and women operations analysts went from 11.4 to 32.1 per cent.

Proponents of comparable-worth legislation would have the government require higher pay for women in traditionally female occupations. Ironically, such laws would slow or even reverse women's progress in entering male-dominated occupations. How? By making it more attractive for women to stay put.