Job evaluation and pay equity : stakes and methods

Résumé En

Despite significant anti-discrimination laws in most western countries, gender pay gap still remains a substantial concern. To fight the persistant undervaluation of feminised occupations, various actions and research have been conducted on non discriminating ways to evaluate jobs and fix salaries. The notion of Comparable Worth has been promoted for several years by the ILO and a few countries to fight against relatively lower female salaries. It is particularly proned by the European Union. In this article, we review the rationales for Comparable Worth and explain how gender biases are generally involved in traditional job evaluation method. We particularly present the case of the French Equality Ombudsman's guide, which has been published in 2013 with the participation of various experts and unions representatives. It aims at giving guidelines and " good practices " in order to prevent gender discrimination in job evaluation. We then expose some experiments in other countries which give insights on how such a guide could really improve pay equity.