The comparable worth movement merits Maoist attention. It could go the way of reactionary imperialist class interests, or revolutionary feminist interests. Revolutionary feminist influence is necessary to steer it on the correct course.

Comparable worth is a concept of equal pay for equivalent work. It is a method of evaluating jobs based on an assumption that equal pay is deserved for jobs that require equal training and labor.

Historically, women have been placed in a subordinate position in the labor force. Regardless of their job placement, they are paid less than men in the same or equivalent fields.

The effects of this patriarchal practice are different across classes. Those in the upper classes experience a far smaller wage disparity than do those in lower class positions. This is not surprising as upper class women often take the capitalists' side in reaping both class and gender privilege.

The movement for comparable worth has the has progressive potential of taking from the overpaid men to give to the underpaid women within each class. Obviously not an overall solution to economic economic disparity, this movement could strike blows against this the patriarchy and provide a context within which women will be educated in opposition to the concept of pay according to gender. This will make the problems of pay according to class background the much easier to grasp. This could expose the benefits of socialist society and the detriments of capitalist society, if revolutionary feminist leadership takes the movement to its correct conclusion.

The benefit to Maoists, besides the raised consciousness of those activists, is the advancement towards communism that this movement could provide. Under socialism we will still have to battle the patriarchy, and the more of that battle that is won under capitalism, the easier the fight will be under socialism.

In the converse, comparable worth could mean taking more from the Third World in the form of superprofits to raise the status of women to that of men. This would only serve to strengthen First World women's alliance with the imperialists and increase the patriarchal and class oppression of the Third World.

This book review criticizes the comparable worth movement from the revolutionary feminist perspective.

Between Feminism and Labor describes white working-class women's attempt to become equal with white working-class men. Blum premises her book on the assumption that working women in this country are oppressed based on their class position as well as their gender position. The women she studies are in clerical, library or equivalent positions. They were mobilized to work with their local union over the issue of comparable worth. Blum offers no evidence for their class oppression, perhaps because there is no material support for this class analysis.

While the comparable worth movement has potential within the white working class, it is important that activists see this as a gender inequality issue and not a movement of the proletariat. Activists should also realize that this inequality is, in fact, rather insignificant when one considers that even First World women as a group are receiving more than the value of their labor-power.

MIM understands that there are pay inequalities between men and women across classes. But the movement for comparable worth Blum describes has the typical white feminist slant that Ignores the economic realities of the proletariat in and outside of this country.

White workers in the United States are receiving the benefits of the exploitation and superexploitation of Third World workers in the form of a wage higher than the value of their labor- power. The comparable worth movement Blum studies aims to raise Amerikan working women's benefits to the level of Amerikan men's. While a potential blow for the patriarchy, but no class victory, and certainly not a union victory for the working people of Amerika.

Organizing white people in Amerika around their class oppression will not create revolutionary consciousness. This activism will only result in struggle for a bigger piece of the pie. Ironically, Blum notes that the comparable worth movement could result in a loss of income or jobs for some women while benefiting others because of the limited size of the pie.

Blum sees comparable worth as a radical leap from the affirmative action movement. The difference is that comparable worth allows women to stay in their jobs, recognizing the social influences that keep women out of male-dominated sectors, instead offering them equality with men in equivalent male sectors.

On the one hand, this approach is good in recognizing that we have to do the best we can under the current system while we try to change it It also recognizes that placing women in male jobs is often only tokenism that does not offer them better pay or status than the traditionally female jobs, since they are placed in the dead end areas of these traditionally male-sector jobs. It is also a step in the direction of recognizing the inequalities created by the capitalist wage system of evaluating the monetary value of different jobs.

On the negative side, Blum points out that comparable worth will bring men into traditionally female-dominated sectors of the job market as it becomes more economically acceptable for them to join these fields. From her brief look at this phenomenon, Blum found that these men tended to create more prestigious positions within the female- dominated fields so that even there they would hold more authority and enjoy higher pay and create upward mobility.

Blum cites several successes of the comparable worth movement in which women were promised higher pay through periodic increases. She also noted a number of failed attempts.

The movement is hampered by a job evaluation process that assigns value to labor, and thus wages, based on capitalist values. These values are hierarchical, placing mental labor above physical labor, and traditionally male labor above traditionally female labor. But it is just this problem which could lead to a greater revolutionary consciousness among the women fighting for comparable worth. The women Blum studies recognize some of the problems with the job evaluation process and focus efforts on changing this system.

Even within the constraints, the job evaluations find significant pay inequality between female jobs and their "male counterparts" in male- dominated fields. Changing this inequality comes down to restructuring Amerikan wealth so that white women can get their "fair" piece of the pie.

While MIM supports women taking from the patriarchy to receive a higher wage, MIM also recognizes that this movement does not challenge the fundamental structure of the patriarchy, nor does it attempt to help the truly gender oppressed.

Blum found that the comparable worth movement often does not enjoy the support of union men because they recognize that the pay the women are demanding has to come from somewhere, and the most likely targets are their pockets These contradictions and difficulties the comparable worth movement faces are indicative of the capitalist system it chooses to operate under.

Blum's analysis of the movement paints a picture of internal struggle within the overpaid Amerikan "working class". The women of this class are trying to eliminate effects the patriarchy has on them while leaving its symbiotic structure of capitalism as well as the patriarchal oppression of the majority of the world's people intact.

Blum does not discuss a comparable worth movement among the Black or Latino proletariat in Amerika and MIM wonders if there is such a movement There is obviously little class value in the comparable worth movement for the proletarian women who would not be significantly improving their economic position if they were to win a battle to elevate their salaries to the level of "male-counterpart jobs."

MIM understands that the current comparable worth movement is incorrect both in its practice within the capitalist system, and in its identification of gender as the principal contradiction. With these incorrect practices it will never achieve anything more than relative equality for white women in the First World.

A comparable worth movement working to eliminate the patriarchy for all people must be a revolutionary movement that seeks to destroy all class, nation, and gender inequalities, focusing on the principal contradiction at this time-- between oppressed and oppressor nations.

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