Just Wages: A Feminist Assessment of Pay Equity

Lin Good, a consultant, was Associate Librarian at Queen’s University.

Far more has been said than done to achieve the goal of ending wage
discrimination. Pay equity is one possible solution devised in Canada to
achieve that goal, and in recent years it has dominated the feminist
agenda in the workplace.

These essays were originally presented at a conference organized
through York University’s Centre for Public Law and Public Policy.
They are written from an explicitly feminist viewpoint, which serves to
sharpen and focus rather than distort. They offer a summary of the
political and social changes that led to the introduction of pay equity
legislation in Ontario; an outline of the procedures and machinery
developed to implement the legislation; and a useful analysis of the
legal and social issues that have arisen as a consequence.

Terms in current use—e.g., gender neutrality and job evaluation—are
clearly defined and put into the context of pay equity. Skill, effort,
responsibility, and working conditions—those important criteria by
which work is categorized and assessed—are traced historically, and
the subtle changes that have developed over the years in their
application are shown. Employers and employees will appreciate this
practical analysis.

In other countries, as in Ontario, the women who have benefited from
pay equity are those who are already in the best-paid female jobs—for
example, unionized women working for large employers, or in the public
service. For such workers, and for fairly well-educated women anywhere,
this is a sound reference text, and a compendium of ideas for refuting
the arguments of pay equity’s opponents. Its academic language may
make it less useful to the women who occupy the minimum-wage jobs, with
skills not recognized, and so not rewarded, because they are
“women’s work.” Pay equity was meant to deal with those
undervalued skills, but has not yet done so adequately.

The problems of continuing the drive for equality of treatment in a
period of economic decline and restructuring are summarized clearly in
this book’s two final chapters. Those chapters should be required
reading for social activists and labor leaders.