Devaluation and the Pay of Comparable Male and Female Occupations

The terms comparable worth and pay equity refer to a form of sex discrimination that went virtually unrecognized until the 1980s. Evidence abounds that jobs filled mostly by women have pay levels lower than they would be if the jobs were filled mostly by men. This is seen as sex discrimination by advocates of the principle of comparable worth, which posits that jobs that are equally demanding and onerous and of equal value to society should be paid equally. The theory positing that employers assign lower wages to some jobs because they are filled largely with women has come to be called the devaluation perspective. Petersen and Saporta (2004) have referred to this type of discrimination as “valuative discrimination.”.