equal pay and comparable worth

the Equal Pay Act of 1963 requires that women and men receive equal pay for equal work. "Equal pay" means people doing the same job receive equal pay: female and male nurses of equal seniority working on the same hospital floor receive the same pay. Comparable worth refers to pay schedules that offer equal pay for jobs similar in education requirements, skill levels, work conditions, and other factors. "Comparable worth" means that a female clerk-typist might earn the same as a male warehouse employee. However, even the most carefully constructed comparable worth plans have serious difficulties weighting job dimensions. Dr. Marc S. Mentzer gives an example: women historically have been concentrated in jobs requiring communication skills (assistants, telephone operators, teachers) while men have historically been concentrated in jobs requiring physical skills (manual laborers, construction workers). In a job evaluation plan, how should these be weighted? Are communication skills equal to, double, or half the weight of physical skills? Job evaluation is not an objective, scientific process. Underlying attitudes pose more serious issues: "In just about every [society], whatever men do or produce is valued more highly than what women do or produce, even though what a man does in one society is done by women in another society. In most societies, it is not the thing done, nor the objects produced, but the sex of the doer that confers distinctions upon acts or products" (Marilyn French, Beyond Power).