Pay inequity, like other aspects of women's disadvantage in employment, has persisted in spite of longstanding measures designed to eradicate it. In Australia, equal pay initiatives led to a marked improvement for women in the early I970s, but recent advancement has been limited, both here and in many other advanced industrialized countries. Observers could conclude that pay equity research and strategy have reached an impasse. This paper identifies a range of current difficulties in researching pay inequity, and argues that, if strategy is to be effectively informed, future research will need to include enhanced ways of clarifying the meaning of the `gender pay gap' and multidisciplinary investigation of the forces inside and outside the labour market that perpetuate and reproduce pay inequality.
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