people enjoy doing high-status things and will trade off pay for status. asking for equal pay as low-status work is essentially asking to have your cake and eat it too
edit: I'm asking because my 7 year stint as an engineer at Wikipedia hasn't provided me with an endless stream of lucrative job offers.
e: and to your edit, i'm talking about social/moral status
You work at google for money. Money is high status under capitalism.
You work at Wikipedia for status in the traditional sense - you trade capitalist status (the salary) for the higher actual status of working for a non profit.
Whether one thinks that improves one's status in the eyes of others imo depends on one's cynicism. "Whatever, I'm living my values, they just don't get it. Maybe others will one day."
That's how I see it for myself anyway, if I'm being honest. But in the end I don't think there's any better path to happiness and fulfillment than living my values.
Can you name me a single job where the tradeoff is "You won't get paid much because this position is so respectable"?
There are respectable jobs where you don't get paid much because the area of work simply does not generate much money (charity), or because they're being exploited and guilt tripped into working hard because of their mission (charity), and there are jobs which are respectable primarily because they pay very well...
But there are no jobs where you're "status-compensated", where you are paid less but that's okay, because the job is so respectable so it's okay to pay you less.