The doctrine of comparable worth is staging a comeback. President Clinton announced a $14 million Equal Pay Initiative and called for passage of Senator Tom Daschle's Paycheck Fairness Act. "Today women earn about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns," the president declared, adding that the gap persists because of "the demeaning practice of wage discrimination in our workplaces." Economists regularly cite other variables, such as part-time status and differing career choices in anticipation of parenthood.

The president's plan implicitly recognizes these differing career preferences, calling for Labor Department officials to devise an objective system to compare various factors of jobs to which either men or women gravitate, adjusting salaries accordingly. Under this system, for example, the government could determine that administrative assistants should be paid as much as oil drillers and teachers as much as construction workers. While the guidelines are described as "voluntary," the president has the option to issue an executive order forbidding the federal government from doing business with companies that do not adopt the standards.

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