Recently we celebrated “Equal Pay Day” which means if you do equal work, the pay should be equal. This isn’t socialism, it is common sense. If you are running an ice cream store and all the employees are new this year and you decide to pay those with blue eyes more per hour than those that don’t have blue eyes, that is unequal pay for equal work. 
Now, if your job description says, “compensation commensurate with experience” and the reigning princess of ice cream dipping shows up for an interview you would easily be able to pay her more for expertise and scooping talent.
All kidding aside, in a recent survey by Society of Resource Management on Job Satisfaction and Engagement, 81% expressed satisfaction with their job and job security took second place to pay for the first time since 2007. Interestingly, when the data was broken down by gender, the results are as follows:
Looking at this, it is interesting to see that for women, compensation is number one. I don’t suppose that could be because in many professional positions, women are paid less than men for equal education, skill, talent and years’ service? I don’t know, but there it is.
Given a pool of all men, would we as a society be willing to pay more for those with blue eyes? Sometimes you just have to break these things down to the absurd to see the reality
1 Future Focus, HR Magazine, Jennifer Schramm, April 2014, page 96.
