A new Massachusetts law aims to prevent pay discrimination by preventing employers from asking for salary history during job searches. The bill will also encourage pay transparency by making it illegal for employers to prevent employees from discussing salaries, encouraging employers to eliminate wage discrimination based on gender, and emphasizing that job titles and descriptions do not decide whether work can be treated as comparable. The bill may help improve pay for women whose previous salaries, if lower than males doing comparable work, had served as a measure during job applications which required salary disclosures. Employers would need to determine an equitable salary based on the job’s value rather than basing it on previous salary history.
See "A Step Toward Equal Pay for Men and Women", Clare Foran, The Atlantic, August 3, 2016