Legalizing Gender Inequality

"Legalizing Gender Inequality presents a new organization-centered paradigm for understanding gender-differentials in pay, which promises to turn on its head standard thinking about the relationship between law, markets, and organizations. By offering important new insights into pay equity, gender relations in the workplace, and organization-market relations, Nelson and Bridges make significant contributions to the sociological literatures on gender, law, and organizations." Lauren Edelman, University of California, Berkeley

• List of figures and tables; Acknowledgements; 1. Law, markets, and the institutional construction of gender inequality in pay; Part I. Theory and Method: 2. Legal theories of sex-based pay discrimination; 3. Toward an organizational theory of gender inequality in pay; 4. Methodological approach: law cases, case studies, and critical empiricism; Part II. The Case Studies. Section A. Public Sector Organizations: 5. Paternalism and politics in a university pay system: Christensen v. State of Iowa; 6. Bureaucratic politics and gender inequality in a state pay system: AFSCME v. State of Washington; Section B. Private Sector Organizations: 7. Corporate politics, rationalization, and managerial discretion: EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co.; 8. The financial institution as a male, profit-making club: Glass v. Coastal Bank; Part III. Conclusion: Legalizing Gender Inequality: 9. Rethinking the relationship between law, markets, and gender inequality in organizations; Appendix: court documents and case materials used in case studies; References; Index.