WOMEN ARE STILL PAID LESS THAN MEN IN WORLD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 71, 2 December 1949, Page 6

WOMEN ARE STILL PAID LESS THAN MEN IN WORLD

Women the world over are still being paid less than the men who work next to them on the same job. The injustice has been recognised internationally, since 1919 when the International Labour Office (1.L.0.) first called attention to it. Now the 1.L.0. is going to try to get a hard-and-fast promise from Governments that they will take steps at home to wipe out the difference. There is litle gallantry irf the way in which women workers are being treated. Came From Men

The 1.L.0. says that the first squawk came from men, writes Sigrid Arne, of the Associated Press. They approved the idea of. equal pay for equal work, but for a selfish reason. They did not seem to be worried whether women got the going rates for a job; what they feared was that employers who found women could do a job for Less pay would cut the pay of the men on such jobs. Apparently women are proving just as able as men on a wide variety of new occupations. Reports flowing in from the world to the 1.L.0. office show that women workers are slowly taking over a good many indxxstries where they were not used back in World War I days. Oddly enough the place where they seem to be making the most marked inroads, in several nations, is in the metal trades and light engineering. At the same tijne, in some lands, their numbers are dropping in the clothing industry. Today’s shortages of goods are working to the advantage of women who have to earn their own living, 1.L.0. reports. Several Governments are trying to draw more women out of the home and into industry. Here are some of the things that are happening to working women around the world, as 1.L.0. reports them : * France First

France has been employing women in such great numbers for so long that there has been little change since 1866. Since that year French women have remained almost constantly one-third of the French working force. In those years there has been a drop in the number of French women doing domestic service and working in factories. But the number in business and the professions has gone up.

Britain reports that women workers are multiplying the most rapidly in the industries which are using new techniques—metal trades, electrical equipment, explosives, chemicals and engineering.

United States reports show that there are now greater proportions of women in men’s apparel, electrical machinery, knitted goods and light engineering industries.

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