Cashing in on Pay Equity?

"This work is an important addition to existing Canadian literature on gender and class analyses of wage heirarchies ... Kainer argues that pay equity provides a tool for women facing economic discrimination to organize collectively and challenge gendered power structures at work ..."

"... to read Kainer is to appreciate the extent to which equivalent work, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder."

Kainer's case studies support Catherine MacKinnon's contention that the pay equity process maintains sex inequality while appearing to address it. Job comparisons are not gender-neutral and objective, but instead are grounded in values that are subjective, gendered and racially marked.

Kainer's book is a compelling demonstration of why feminist and anti-racist activists need to develop factors and weightings in job evaluations that reflect the worth of work on their own terms.

Despite decades of progress in opening up traditionally male fields to women, there continues to be a gap between the earnings of men and women in North America. According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, the average American woman earned $.73 for every $1.00 that the average American man earned. In turn, a 1999 Canadian government study found that the average Canadian woman earned roughly $70 for each $100 that the average Canadian man earned. Part of the reason for the pay equity gap is different rates paid to men and women for the same job. However, another reason, perhaps even more pervasive and difficult to address, is unequal rates of pay between jobs that tend to be performed by either men or women. Kainer discusses these comples issues in her book, analyzing the impact that pay equity legislation implementation had on Ontario's supermarket chains during the 1990s. Kainer begins her study with an analysis of the theoretical frameworks that have been used to [explore] the gaps in wages between men and women.

A fundamental question is whether men and women begin on a level playing field, or men have a systematic cultural advantage that must be taken into account in order for true wage equity to be achieved. This advantage results both in them getting better jobs and in the jobs that they perform being paid better than jobs that are culturally encoded as 'female.' ...

Although Kainer's analysis is based on the implementation of specific pay equity legislation in Ontario within a specific industry, her analysis of the problematics of the pay equity legal strategy has larger implications for workers in the United States and around the world.

Highly recommended for all public, special, and academic libraries, especially those with gender studies and/or legal collections.