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Several methods of calculation may be used to quantify the gender pay gap. The sociology of quantification shows how the construction of indicators may be employed to define certain notions. Literature on the performativity of quantification also highlights the effect that acts of calculation can have upon reality. This article combines these fields as it examines the illocutionary performative power of the 'equal pay index', which was developed by the French government in 2018, and which companies are legally obliged to publish on an annual basis. The article therefore draws on different types of documents: leaflets explaining the construction of the index, government‐issued communications, statements given by members of the government and companies' own communications. With the aid of this index, the government can provide more precise definitions of the notion of equal pay and the field of action of companies. The novelty and benefits of the current case lie in the pairing of a relatively classic tool for commensuration and a subject — equal pay — that has suffered from a vague definition for decades. Furthermore, this article offers a conjoint study of the mode of calculation of the index and the emerging discourse around it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to political parties and the government, trade union confederations and employer organizations are major power players in the Finnish labour market, policymaking and the wider society. This article analyses the significant role of the Finnish corporatist regime in creating and maintaining the gendered hierarchies of the labour market, including the gender pay gap. Using the case of the Finnish nurses' industrial action in 2007, our analysis highlights the capacity of the corporatist regime to resist change in current wage relativities and effectively block attempts made to challenge the status quo. This article describes how wages are macro‐political, shaped by political processes, negotiations, power relations and vested interests of central stakeholders within the Finnish corporatist regime. The analysis focuses on the problem representations through which the actors articulate either their attempt to increase wages or to maintain the status quo, which makes their vested interests, as well as politics, visible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the intertwining inequalities in wage determination and the gender-neutral legitimacy that pay systems provide by masking these inequalities. Job evaluation and performance-related pay were originally designed for purposes other than promoting equal pay, namely as managerial tools for determining wage levels. Typically, the main objective of a pay system is not to promote equal pay. Still, as a tool for assessing the value of work, job evaluation is regarded as a central method in promoting equal pay. The use of job evaluation is recommended by the European Commission and the International Labour Organization, and often features in gender-equality policy and legislation. In contrast with the status of job evaluation, little research exists on performance-related pay and gender pay equity. The findings show that the wages determined by pay systems reflect gendered cultural valuations of jobs and occupations. Pay systems provide gender-neutral legitimacy for gender-based wage disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits Jewson and Mason's seminal theoretical framework on liberal and radical approaches to equal opportunity policy and practice by applying it to our research on the implementation of the Gender Equality Duty in UK local government. Conducted at the height of Thatcherism, Jewson and Mason's research offers a useful platform for assessing equality initiatives in local government during periods of political hostility to equality underpinned by cuts to public services, which in more recent time is ascribed to austerity. Drawing on qualitative research in five case study local authorities, this paper assesses strategies for protecting and promoting gender equality practices and policies in the face of change within public services. We analyse three types of politics of equality (political philosophy, organizational politics and party politics) that feature in Jewson and Mason's analysis. In line with recent feminist research, our data indicate that equality specialists continue to use both liberal and radical discourses in instrumental ways to promote equality and resist change as described by Jewson and Mason, but these were more clearly framed within business case arguments influenced by the modernization agenda of the 1990s. Our data indicate that even business case arguments have been unable to protect equality initiatives from the 2010 coalition government's austerity and cuts agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Hélène Cixous's 'The laugh of the Medusa', this paper revisits a public uproar over menstruation in the workplace triggered by a statement from the CEO of New Zealand's largest body of private sector employers, that periods make women take more sick leave than men. The utterance triggered an astonishing outpouring of public discussion and writing about working while menstruating, as well as about productivity and equal pay. We discuss how a comment about women's periods ruptured the status quo of menstrual repression by using selected online posts rendered as poems. Then, drawing on Cixous and the idea of poetic rapture, we discuss women's online writing in tandem with feminist writing on menstruation. In our theoretical reflections we consider how poetry, menstruation and social media can 'make trouble' for regimes of power. We argue that menstruation should be a required topic for organizational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current locus of promoting equal pay in Finland is the workplace. Legal instruments, like gender equality planning and its pay surveys, are to be implemented in workplaces. This development raises important questions about the central role of the local trade union representatives as promoters of equal pay. This article analyses how local trade union representatives construct the problem of unequal pay and their role in narrowing the gender pay gap and their possible agonistic adversaries in negotiations on equal pay. Different problem representations concerning equal pay are analysed and evaluated on the basis of their potential to fracture the gender-blind wage bargaining culture and ability to cash in on the promises made towards narrowing the gender pay gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1969 and 1972 Australia adopted a highly distinctive approach to equal pay. Its unusual characteristic lay in its incorporation in Australia's system of wage determination. This reform was advantageous to women in paid work but key ambiguities emerged as to how the right to equal pay would be claimed in areas of highly feminized work. In 1993 the right to equal pay was introduced in statute and conjoined to a test of sex discrimination, a construction that was ineffective, particularly in the context of a decentralizing wages system. State jurisdictions in Australia developed innovative responses to this impasse that were founded on the concept of undervaluation. These approaches addressed a persistent flaw in rights-based approaches, the requirement for women to demonstrate they are the same as men to claim equality. These approaches, although currently proscribed, demonstrated that particular constructions of rights-based discourses can be effective if connected to the underlying dynamics of gender pay inequity and grounded in the instruments of industry and minimum wage determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is more to the knowledge-based society (KBS) than an increasing use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). It involves a new production paradigm and, therefore, a redefinition of how our societies function. In the political debate a direct linear causality has been established between the move towards the KBS and social cohesion. We discuss this assumption using the concrete example of gender equality. There are three processes at the very core of the paradigmatic change in the production system: new forms of knowledge (demand for ICT skills, but also social competences), a transformation in the type of products in demand (tertiarization of the economy), and new modes of regulation (new forms of work organization and new types of work). We discuss the main conclusions of the prolific debate that has recently taken place concerning the gender impact of these processes and present a statistical analysis of the gender dimension of the KBS resulting from them. This analysis demonstrates that progress in gender equality is not balanced. While it is important when accessing employment, it is much more limited as far as pay and childcare are concerned. Making headway in one of these dimensions of gender equality is not necessarily associated with progress in others. Secondly, this analysis shows that there is not necessarily a direct connection between a high educational level and gender equality. Finally, it shows that the role played by institutional factors is very significant, although it varies depending on the equality dimension considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common to identify a role for trade unions in combating sex inequality at work through collective bargaining. This article uses a survey of paid union officers to identify the context in which equality bargaining by unions is likely to occur, using the specific issue of bargaining on equal pay. It concludes that equality bargaining is a function of women’s voice within unions, the characteristics and preferences of bargainers themselves and of a favourable public policy environment. Bargaining on equal pay is also more likely in centralized negotiations that cover multiple employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]