| Background of the problem/gap
· Koskinen Sandberg, P. (2017), A major finding in the limitations of this study was that there was often a gap between the formal pay system and the realized pay system.
· Inesi & Cable (2015), suggests that a similar bias might emerge for other groups that are stereotyped as lower socioeconomic groups.
· Joshi, Son & Ron (2015), says that nearly five decades after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, academics and policymakers are still asking the question: Can women close the gap in performance and rewards in the workplace? The answer to this question based on our research is: Women often close the gap in performance, but not the gap in rewards.
· Bishu and Alkadry (2017), recommendations include an investigation of the gender pay gap across different levels of an organization. The wages at different levels within an organization vary substantially from one level to the other. Also, as stated, further research is needed to see how wage and gender interact, and whether the gender pay gap widens or narrows as women move from one level to another.
Review of literature topics with key theme for each one
i. Negative effect of competence signals on women’s performance evaluations
· There are theories that evaluators may see such competence signals as a threat to the traditional gender hierarchy, which leads to a negative bias when evaluating women’s on-the-job performance (Inesi & Cable, 2015)
ii. Intertwining gender inequalities and wage discrimination
· A related concept that captures the intertwining gender inequalities in formal wage determination practices is institutionalized undervaluation (Koskinen Sandberg, 2016b). Institutionalized undervaluation refers to how the undervaluation of women’s work is embedded in the formal structure of wage determination, such as collective agreements. Institutionalized undervaluation originates in the gendered understandings of appropriate wages for work conducted by men and women, that is, wages as a social practice. However, it has become a part of the formal structure and the gendered nature of the structure often remains invisible and unrecognized. (Sandberg, 2016)
iii Job Evaluation and equal pay
· Job evaluation has been regarded as a central method in determining work of equal value and one of the most important methods for promoting equal pay. There have been high expectations for job evaluation to make the undervaluation of women’s work visible. The use of job evaluation in the promotion of equal pay has been widely debated. Job evaluation is linked both to gender biases in wage determination when the job-evaluation system is discriminatory against women’s work and to the possibility of detecting the undervaluation of women’s work using a non-biased job-evaluation system (Sandberg, 2016)
Theoretical Foundations
· Social Role Theory: Social role theory (Eagly,1987) provides a theoretical explanation of how gender differences in perceptions are affected by work experience. |
