Apples and Pumpkins and Cans of Worms
Posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
This summer I took my ultimate dream vacation! Since my undergraduate days, majoring in Women’s Studies, I’ve wanted to visit Seneca Falls, New York. Seneca Falls was the site of the first Women’s Rights Convention back in 1848. The site is now a National Park consisting of a Visitor’s Center; the Wesleyan Chapel, the actual site of the First Women’s Rights Convention; Elizabeth Cady Stanton home; and a statue near the river bank commemorating the meeting of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was truly a dream come true.
What does all of this have to do with a blog about pumpkins? Well, at the Visitor’s Center we saw a display on the gender gap. This is the text of the display:
Apples and Pumpkins and Cans of Worms
In 1990, women earned 68% of what men did for the same job. Two plans to lessen the gender gap in wage earning are equal pay for equal work, and pay equity (or comparable worth). Equal pay for equal work means the same wage for the same job regardless of who does it. In pay equity, elements of a job are given a number value. The total scores of various jobs are compared. Jobs with similar scores earn similar salaries.
Civil rights legislation passed in the 1960’s and 1970’s forbids wage discrimination on account of sex or race. But pay equity encountered strong opposition. In 1977, Washington State Governor Dixie Lee Ray denied a request for pay equity because she felt the study proving inequity compared “apples and pumpkins and cans of worms and they are not comparable.” Now Washington, Minnesota and other state governments are required by law to use pay equity to determine wages.