No, Federal law prohibits reducing pay for any employee to remedy discrimination. Pay equity means equal treatment for all workers. It merely means that wages must be based on job requirements like skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions without consideration of race, sex, or ethnicity. In Washington State, pay equity was achieved at a cost of 2.6 percent of the state's personnel costs and was implemented over an eight-year period. Voluntary implementation of pay equity is cost effective, while court-ordered pay equity adjustments can lead to greater costs.
Discrimination is costly and illegal.
Again, part of the wage gap is attributed to differences in education, experiences and time in the work force. However, the overwhelming evidence that wage discrimination persists in America can be found in numerous court cases and legal settlements, Department of Labor investigations, surveys of men and women on the job, and salary surveys that control for age, experience and time in the workforce. While women sometimes take time out of the workforce to raise children, it should be noted that when couples are deciding who should stay home with children, the fact that the wife is earning a lower salary impacts that decision. In addition, some of the other explainable factors can sometimes be attributed to discrimination. For example, if women and men have different jobs in a company, women may not be choosing the lower paying jobs.