Despite legislation and litigation, women continue to earn less money than men. In a series of major pay equity lawsuits, the courts have held consistently that employers are not responsible for documented wage discrepancies because they are simply following the market. But Robert L. Nelson (IPR-Sociology) and William P. Bridges of the University of Illinois at Chicago forcefully refute this argument in a study of four landmark pay equity cases that involved both private and public employers.

In Legalizing Gender Inequality: Courts, Markets, and Unequal Pay for Women in America (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Nelson and Bridges argue that a large part of the pay differences between "male" and "female" jobs are not the result of market forces or business efficiency considerations but are produced by specific organizational actions and policies for which employers could be held legally responsible.

These organizational processes took different forms in the various work settings, the authors point out, but the effect - disadvantaging women employees - was the same across employers. In one case that involved clerical employees at the University of Northern Iowa, physical plant workers, all men, were able to obtain higher wages, not for reasons of market necessity, but because they routinely engaged in confrontational, collective action to which the administration responded. In the case of Coastal Bank (a pseudonym for a major financial institution), the management functioned both explicitly and implicitly as a "male club" with the result that women were paid less than men, denied promotions, and excluded from top positions.

In considering what policy options might address gender inequality in pay, Nelson and Bridges reject the comparable worth approach, which they contend "misdiagnoses a large part of the problem." Instead, they propose a "best practice model" of gender-neutral wage administration, which they articulate in some detail, coupled with selective litigation, to challenge specific practices that appear to disadvantage women.