hr d3 franklin
Question
What preventive steps can organizations take to guard against pay inequities?
reply to the students response below in a 150 words min and provide 1 reference
students response
Before providing the steps to guard against pay inequities, we must first understand a bit about the Comparable Worth Theory that our textbook references. This theory contends that “every job by its very nature has a worth to the employers and society that can be measured and assigned a value. Each job should be compensated on the basis of its value and paid the same as other jobs with the same value. The theory further asserts that entire classes of jobs are traditionally undervalued and underpaid because they are held by women and that this inequality amounts to sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Rue, Ibrahim & Byars, 2016, p. 57).”
To prevent violations of discrimination, organizations can take the following steps (Rue, Ibrahim & Byars, 2016, p. 58):
- Avoid overconcentrations of men or women (or members of the various minority groups) in particular jobs;
- Evaluate whether there is any direct evidence of bias in setting wage rates;
- Resist, as much as possible, the temptation to deviate form an internal job evaluation survey or a market survey because of difficulties encountered in hiring or retaining employees at the rates established by such surveys.
- An employer who utilizes a certain type of job evaluation system companywide and then deviating from it, running a severe risk.
- If an employer uses a job evaluation system or systems, it should constantly monitor the system to determine the average wages being paid to men and women for comparable jobs.
The latter part of this final bullet reminds me of the struggle of our U.S. Women’s Soccer Team who are currently fighting for equal pay. They have a pending lawsuit filed against the U.S. Soccer Federation accusing it of gender discrimination in violation of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Kaplan, 2019). Clearly, the women have outplayed their brethren, yet their wages are not nearly the same for performing comparable jobs. Our women’s team have garnered more success than their counterparts after having just won the World Cup (2019) – the women’s fourth in contrast to the men’s best finish coming in 1930 (3rd place) (Kaplan, 2019). Nevertheless, the compensation does not reflect each team’s performance.
This is just one example of reality. Pay inequities between men and women are happening across the board in virtually every occupation.
References:
Kaplan, E. (2019). U.S. Women’s Soccer Equal Pay Fight: What’s the latest, and what’s next? Retrieved on September 4th, 2019 from https://www.espn.com/sports/soccer/story/_/id/27175927/us-women-soccer-equal-pay-fight-latest-next
Rue, L., Ibrahim, N. & Byars, L. (2016). Human Resource Management (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill
