Try this passage question:“Comparable worth, as a standard applied to eliminate inequities in pay, insists that the values of certain tasks performed in dissimilar jobs can be compared. In the last decade, this approach has become a critical social policy issue, as large numbers of private-sector firms and industries as well as federal, state, and local governmental entities have adopted comparable worth policies or begun to consider doing so.
“This widespread institutional awareness of comparable worth indicates increased public awareness that pay inequities—that is, situations in which pay is not “fair” because it does not reflect the true value of a job—exist in the labor market. However, the question still remains: have the gains already made in pay equity under comparable worth principles been of a precedent-setting nature or are they mostly transitory, a function of concessions made by employers to mislead female employees into believing that they have made long-term pay equity gains?
“Comparable worth pay adjustments are indeed precedent-setting. Because of the principles driving them, other mandates that can be applied to reduce or eliminate unjustified pay gaps between male and female workers have not remedied perceived pay inequities satisfactorily for the litigants in cases in which men and women hold different jobs. But whenever comparable worth principles are applied to pay schedules, perceived unjustified pay differences are eliminated. In this sense, then, comparable worth is more comprehensive than other mandates, such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Neither compares tasks in dissimilar jobs (that is, jobs across occupational categories) in an effort to determine whether or not what is necessary to perform these tasks—know-how, problem-solving, and accountability—can be quantified in terms of its dollar value to the employer. Comparable worth, on the other hand, takes as its premise that certain tasks in dissimilar jobs may require a certain amount of training, effort, and skill; may carry similar responsibility; may be carried on in an environment having a similar impact upon the worker; and may have a similar dollar value to the employer.”
Q.“It can be inferred from the passage that application of “other mandates” would be unlikely to result in an outcome satisfactory to the female employees in which of the following situations?
“I. Males employed as long-distance truck drivers for a furniture company make $3.50 more per hour than do females with comparable job experience employed in the same capacity.
“II. Women working in the office of a cement company content that their jobs are as demanding and valuable as those of the men working outside in the cement factory, but the women are paid much less per hour.
“III. A law firm employs both male and female paralegals with the same educational and career backgrounds, but the starting salary for male paralegals is $5,000 more than for female paralegals.
“(A) I only
“(B) II only
“(C) III only
“(D) I and II only
Wow. That’s a lot of work: three long scenarios and you have to figure out whether a particular thing can be inferred about each scenario.
First, they’re asking you to do more work than normal to answer one question. You might be okay with that on certain quant problems, but it is pretty annoying on RC. So the first thing to figure out is whether you even want to bother trying this problem at all.
Normally do not read the question before reading the passage, but in this case, you can do so. You may want to see how hard the question seems and, if you do decide if you want to do it, then during your read-through,you may want to keep an eye out for the info you’ll need to answer it.
Okay, here’s the start of the problem. Don’t try to answer it, of course—you haven’t even looked at the passage yet! Just decide whether this looks like something you think you can handle or whether this looks like a nightmare, in which case you are going to move on.
If you know that RC is a weaker area for you, this would be a great time to move on. If you are behind on time and need to catch up, ditto. You don’t want to get sucked into wasting any time at all on a problem that is so ridiculously long.
Unless you’re really behind on time, you’ll likely still want to try the other questions associated with this passage. But feel free to bail on something like this.
If you’re going to do this problem, then it’s going to be crucial to make sure that you understand the question before going to the statements.
First, this is an inference question. Inference questions require you to figure out what must be true based upon some evidence presented in the passage.
Glance at the statements. Don’t read completely or try to understand them. Just articulate to yourself what kind of info they contain.
They seem to be describing very specific scenarios that weren’t at all talked about in the passage.These are hypothetical scenarios that you are going to have to think about somehow.
Go back to the question stem to see how you have to think about the scenarios.
application of “other mandates”
would be unlikely to result in an outcome satisfactory to the female employees in which of the following situations?
Time to read that text and try to articulate your own answer. You need to read enough to understand how female employees would be affected.
Here’s the relevant text from the passage:
“Comparable worth pay adjustments are indeed precedent-setting. Because of the principles driving them,other mandates that can be applied to reduce or eliminate unjustified pay gaps between male and female workers have not remedied perceived pay inequities satisfactorily for the litigants in cases in which men and women hold different jobs. But whenever comparable worth principles are applied to pay schedules, perceived unjustified pay differences are eliminated.”
Put this all in the context of the overall point of the passage: CW did / does make a difference in alleviating the pay gap.
“Other mandates” means other things besides CW. But those things “have not remedied perceived pay inequities satisfactorily” when “men and women hold different jobs.” BUT CW did actually help in that situation.
Okay. So the “other” stuff, whatever it is, doesn’t really work when you’re talking about different jobs for the male and female employees involved. That would definitely be considered an unsatisfactory outcome for the female employees, so you need to look for scenarios in which the employees have different jobs.
Go back to the statements.
“I. Males employed as long-distance truck drivers for a furniture company make $3.50 more per hour than do females with comparable job experience employed in the same capacity.”
“Employed in the same capacity” = the same job, so this doesn’t fit what I’m looking for. You are looking for situations in which the employees do
not have the same kind of job.
You can eliminate answers (A) and (D) based on this statement alone.
“II. Women working in the office of a cement company content that their jobs are as demanding and valuable as those of the men working outside in the cement factory, but the women are paid much less per hour.”
Different jobs—office vs. factory. If the “other” methods (not CW) are used here, then the women aren’t likely to be happy with the outcome. This one works. Eliminate answer (C).
Only answer (B) is left. Let’s check the third statement just in case.
“III. A law firm employs both male and female paralegals with the same educational and career backgrounds, but the starting salary for male paralegals is $5,000 more than for female paralegals.”
Same job. Nope, this one’s wrong, too. Statement II is the only one that fits the “different job” criterion.
The correct answer is (B).
