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From: edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Equal pay for comparable worth
Message-ID: <2306@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-Feb-85 22:28:04 EST
Article-I.D.: randvax.2306
Posted: Wed Feb 13 22:28:04 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Feb-85 04:43:42 EST
References: <239@mhuxr.UUCP> <648@unmvax.UUCP>
Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica
Lines: 32

> > What do you usenetters think of the concept of "equal pay for comparable
> > work"? As I understand it, this is to reduce the difference between
> > pay scales in "male dominated" (e.g. truck drivers) vs "female dominated"
> > (e.g. nurses, secretaries) occupations. There would presumably have to
> > be an equivalency chart or something.

> It is a crock.  Supply and demand sets fair wages.  If a woman wants the extra
> money associated with driving a truck, she can try to get a rig or work for
> an agency and drive trucks...
> 	--Cliff [Matthews]

``Supply and demand sets fair wages?'' Talk about crocks!  Only someone who
works in a field like computer science, which is highly paid and has a net
shortage of workers, could believe that such an economic theory reflects
the real world.  It comes from an order of economic thinking that wants
to treat labor as just another commodity, and not consider what the ``labor
market'' means in terms of human lives.  It comes from a false conception
of economics, which sees the market as a mathematical entity, and not as
the social, political, and psychological interactions of human beings
exchanging labor, goods, and currency.  (It's funny how so many people
seem to think of the statistics which *measure* the economy as somehow
*being* the economy.)

Women's wages are lower because of social institutions, not because of
supply and demand.  How else do you explain the fact that a female-
dominated occupation such as nursing, for which demand exceeds supply,
is paid so much less than a male-dominated occupation such as truck-
driving, in which supply and demand are roughly equal?  Especially when
you consider the relative level of skills involved...

		-Ed Hall
		decvax!randvax!edhall