Bennett Amendment - Comparable Worth Debate

Comparable Worth Debate

Arthur Gutman in 1999's EEO Law and Personnel Practices describes comparable worth as a system of ranking jobs on "a continuum of value to the company", allowing, for example, that while one job may be worth $10 an hour, a job of slightly less complexity might be worth $8. Evaluating this continuum provides an "internal worth", indicative of the value of the job to a particular company, which may be compared to an "external worth", or the value of a job to the wider market.

The impact of the Bennett Amendment on the comparable worth debate has been a point of contention. In 1989, Ellen Frankel Paul summarized the matter in Equity and Gender: The Comparable Worth Debate, by posing two questions: "Does the Bennett Amendment plug into Title VII all of the Equal Pay Act's standards, thus importing the "equal work" standard of the latter? Or does it merely inject the Equal Pay Act's four exceptions...?" Paul notes that the question is pivotal to resolving the Comparable Worth Debate, for if it is interpreted to incorporate the entirety of the Equal Pay Act's standards, then it becomes impossible to prove a "comparable worth" suit, defining two different jobs in a scale of importance and determining by it how to judge equal pay.