SEX EQUALITY.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 February 1924, Page 1

SEX EQUALITY.

EQUAL WORK FOR EQUAL PAY. The women’s organisations in Great Britain which are engaged in advancing the interests of their sex with the object of establishing sox equality' in the eyes of the law, and in professional, commercial and industrial occupations, are divided on the question of “Equal pay for equal work.’’ This question was first raised during tho war, when many thousands of women were called noun to do the work of men who wore drafted into the military forces. In principle tho demand for equal pay for equal work is reasonable and just, hut even amongst advanced feminists doubts have arisen whether iis practicable application would he iti-,t, or even desirable, in the interest.- of women workers as a whole.

Mrs Murv Slocks, writing on this subject in a judicial tone in the new i.aic ol lhe “Woman’s Year Book. ’

-a\s: -“There is no doubt whatever that work whose eflicieney may appear in first sigh! to he equal as between men and women is not always quite as equal as it looks. In any oroupnjjoi! where part of the cost of training is home hy the employer, or where continuity of employment is a desirable quality, the liability of the woman to get married, her relatively short average life in the labour market may render her woik of less value to hci employer than that of her no more efficient, hut probably more permanent male colleague. Again where men and women are employed on a piece-rate basis earning a similar wage for similar units of output, in eases where the average woman works more slowly that the average man, she may prove h->s valuable to her employer, since her unit of work, though costing no more in wages than that of the man, will nevertheless absorb a greater proportion of overhead charges in the form of heating, lighting, rent, etc. Finally, the translation of sex prejudice into market values may he said to

compromise the term ‘equal work.’ A fashionable tradition may result in a footman actually giving greatei satisfaction to his employer than an equally capable oarlotir maid: and in this sense his work has a superior value which helps to account for his higher wage. Bearing such cotis-iderai.ions in mind quite a number ol unimpeachably devoted feminists regard a too rigid insistence on the simple formula, •Equal pay for equal work’ with some trepidation —fearing that-, in practice, it mnv involve a demand that work which is not on closer inve.-ligatiou precisely equal to that performed hy a man shall he remunerated at an equal rate, with the result that the woman finds herself penalised as a competitor and deprived of her ioh.’ FIXED RATE OF BAY.

The National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and the professional and industrial organisations of woman workers are in favour of the strict application of the principle of equal pay for equal work, because a modilieali-m of it would open the way for line!••:'cutting the earnings of male wo-xers They demand that every class of work ni which men and women are engaged shall have its tixed rate ot pay, tries poetive of the sex of the workers. But oilier advocates of the equality of the sexes realise that a strict application of the principle of equal pay for equal work would often penalise ’he woman worker as a competitor in the labour market- with men. They, fore, adtucato the modification of the.

principle s" a> to allow for a red'.a d rate of pay for woman in proportion m the proved inferiority of her v.oik where it can he proved to he inferior or less valuable to Hie employer. It is realised hy nil advocates of equal ]><iy for equal work that tho chief cause for the general inferiority of

women's earnings in comparison w :li men’s is tin'll, most women workers /• r e nnl, and do not expert to lie, responsible for tlie mainfenariee of n fanrly. "The difference in earnings ns between men and women,” states Miss Eleanor llathbone. “refloats tlie rough -nid ready provision wliieli our present economic system makes through the wages of the individual man for" the rearing of future generations. The levelling down of men's wages would, therefore, lie socially disastrous. The alternative of a general levelling down of the wages of woman workers lo a family-subsistence level is impossible under existing conditions of national productivity.”

Hut the women’s organisations aie alive to the fact that the rough and ready economic system under whi -h men are paid on a family-subsistence basis, and women are not, is not only socially unjust, hut economically wasteful. Tt- assumes that every male worker obtaining the fixed rate of pay in his occupation is married, and that all families are the same size. The solution of the problem on a just basis, both from the point of view of economics and equality of the sexes, is the adoption of the principle of family endowment, by which the burden of parenthood would be lifted from the shoulders of the individual wage earner and placed upon the industry in which he is engaged, or on the community. The advocates of equal citizenship are also alive to the fact that the adoption of the principle of family endowment would also solve another difficult problem, that of the economic independence of married women.