Gender-neutral job evaluation has become a key method for confirming the presence of value discrimination when accounting for job-related factors such as required skills, responsibility levels, effort and working conditions, and for correcting for a gender-biased pay setting. However, this extensive use of gender-neutral job evaluation tools makes it important to examine the validity of these tools.

The purpose of this report is to evaluate the validity of a weighting method stated in a gender-neutral job evaluation tool that is recommended by the International Labor Office (ILO). The purpose of the ILO tool is to function as a general and worldwide guideline for gender-neutral job evaluations. The evaluation starts from the basic validity requirement that a weighting method has to be based on a correct interpretation of the weights in additive value models, which are used as “measures” of the value of jobs. The conclusion of the evaluation is that the ILO weighting method does not fulfill this basic validity requirement. The conclusion is reached in the following way:

First, I show that the meaning of the weights in additive value models is to determine so-called compensatory relations between job-related factors, which have an important impact on the results of job evaluations.

Second, by analyzing the weighting instructions in the ILO tool, I find that this weighting method is based on so-called direct rating of the relative importance of the job-related factors.

Third, I show that direct rating is based on an incorrect interpretation of the weights. Thus, users of the ILO tool will probably misinterpret the consequences of their weighting decisions. This, in turn, might give rise to a biased weighting, i.e. a weighting that the users would reject when they come to know the correct meaning of the weights.