In other words, appropriate disclosure would require firms that choose to practice discrimination to expose their discriminatory practices to the world. Disclosure would also be an important mechanism for enforcing equal employment opportunity statutes. At present, most legislation pertaining to economic justice for women is complaint based. The private sector has no affirmative obligation to institute fair employment practices. Disclosure would encourage business to police itself, and would provide government the tools it needs to actively enforce the law and to prevent, rather than simply react to, discriminatory corporate behavior.
Disclosure is particularly appropriate as a component of future comparable worth legislation.
Comparable worth requires the comparison of jobs within firms that do not necessarily have tasks in common, and the comparison of people who do not necessarily have contact with each other. Comparisons are based on skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions. A comparable worth system would be considerably less effective without disclosure, since secretaries, for example, would have no way to compare their salaries to other job categories, such as van drivers. Business is prone to oppose virtually any regulation, claiming it will cost too much, cause lay-offs, reveal proprietary information, and make American firms uncompetitive. Since disclosure does not regulate but merely requires reporting of existing business practices, it is not open to such criticism.