Public Service Women

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 360, 17 May 1946, Page 6

Public Service Women

"\/ OMEN in Great Britain have obtained a Royal Commission to investigate this question. In New Zealand, I am sorry to say, there is no such widespread interest. We have, on the one hand, a great shortage of female labour, as anyone who reads the advertisement columns in the Press must be aware;. on the other hand, women who have remained in offices and industry are accused of causing unemployment among returned men. "Why has this situation arisen? Surely because, as in the past, women workers are still paid considerably less than their male equivalents, and consequently employers have, during the war, found it profitable to use female employees in a great many occupations which were once filled by men. In the last few years, women have moved from the so-called ‘feminine’ occupations, such as_ short-hand-typing and nursing, into all fields of industry, and in some they provide @ menace to returning male workers by forming a body of effective cheap labour, which is economically profitable to the employer. The same thing happens during a depression."

What Does * It Mean?

here is only one real answer to this problem-equal pay for equal work. But what do we mean by this? Not that each job held by a man or a woman should be considered and their relative

merits in performing it weighed-no two people ever do exactly identical work in the same time or

with the same efficiency. No, we ask that standard rates of pay should be fixed for all clearly-defined occupations, and that they should be paid to the worker doing the job, regardless of sex. To fix wages for women as a special group séems as illogical as to fix wages for groups of men according to their religion, their race, or their weight. Equal pay for equal work means

that a rate should be fixed for a job, and that appointment to that job should be because of merit and ability only. It is often argued that if women receive equal pay for equal work, many married women will find it more tempting to keep on with their jobs rather than have children. War-time experience in Britain has shown that this is not so. There, the birth-rate has increased, largely because of higher family incomes and freedom from the fear of unemployment. Men and women have been able to marry younger, and to start their homes with larger savings than ever before, and married women do not have to go on working to supplement the family income, as they so often did before the war.

Two Other Objections

Without a system of family allowances such a change would admittedly be difficult. But such a system has now been

introduced in New Zealand. Equal pay for equal work is not dependent upon a system

of family allowances, sinee it justifies itself by being a protection against cheap labour, but it should certainly be supplemented in that way. A further objection. is that while women are all right in subordinate positions such as typists and secretaries, it would be fatal to allow them to become controlling officers, as men would rebel against such a situation. To a certain extent, these critics are right, for up till the present women have been working under certain disadvantages. However, where men and women do receive equal

rates for the same job, the evidence suggests that they work as well together.

Physical Incapacity

There are, we realise, many jobs which women just cannot do as well as men-iobs for which thev are pnhvsically

incapable. If equal rates of pay prevailed, employers would not give women such jobs; but for the iobs that women

can do equal pay would remove the temptation to employ them merely to lower the wages bills. " Equal pay for equal work will not give women a glimpse of the millennium, but it will help to sweep away the barriers which deny them the opportunity of even competing for many of the more interesting and highly paid jobs available to-day. Food, clothing, and shelter cost the same for both men and women; the woman saves to provide for the home as well as the man; many women now spend the whole of their lives working in the business or industrigl field; the opportunities at least should be the same for both.