Equal Pay for Equal Work: The Role of Job Evaluation in an Evolving Social Norm
President Clinton received a bipartisan, standing ovation during his 1999 "State of the Union Address," when he pledged to renew efforts to achieve equal pay for equal work by gender. Many commentators noted that this initiative received the most positive response of any issue mentioned during the address. How did the concept of equal pay for equal work, so controversial throughout much of the twentieth century, become a generalized social norm? This article explores the role of one social practice in institutionalizing equal pay as a standard in wage policy. The widespread institution of job evaluation by industry during and immediately following World War II was an important moment in the history of wage determination. On the one hand, as hinted by the quote above, it opened the door to equal pay for equal work and even equal pay for work of equal value. However, with the door to equal pay ajar, job evaluation came face to face with the pre-existing practice of separate pay scales for men and women. The dissonance had to be resolved. What follows is a historical snapshot of the development and implementation of job evaluation, including why it became predominant in the 1940s and how, more than two decades prior to the federal Equal Pay Act of 1963, it evolved to erase explicitly separate pay scales by gender and yet, at the same time, reproduced gendered pay practices in new ways.