Affirmative action  seems to have become the most recognized strategy for integrating the sexes in the workplace. In fact, according to some scholars and activists, women are “widely assumed… [to] have been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action in employment.” However, a study of the evidence indicates that “the actual results of affirmative action [for women] belie the rhetoric.” Moreover, the assumption that affirmative action was a major part of modern anti-discrimination policy and that women could not be without it is not clearly reflected in feminist practice. In addition to affirmative action, the women’s movement has focused on a wide range of issues pertaining to employment rights, including the concept of comparable worth, or “equal pay for work of equivalent value.” This concept addressed the disparity in wages through a system of job evaluations that would require employers to pay female employees in female-dominated jobs the same salaries as males in male-dominated jobs of comparable value, and was used as part of a strategy aimed at broadening the feminist base by taking on the problem of the gender-based wage gap. This Article will address these two issues together, constituting a historical, legal, and sociological study of the actual and rhetorical roles of affirmative action on behalf of women, and an assessment of the controversial concept of comparable worth.