EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 367, 5 July 1946, Page 5

EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

Sir,-Of all those interviewed by your reporters not one remembered thet "equal pay for equal work" is primarily the demand of the men in industry. Today, when goods and labour are short, the threat of cheap female labour to the security of the family man tends to be replaced by an artificial discussion of sex equality-a wholly unreal question. Most of the reasons against "the rate for the job" are laughable. Three highly respectable gentlemen suggest that women need to be starved into motherhood-surely unjust to the women and slighting to the men. I, and most men who have yet to

marry, would prefer to go on believing that sex attraction is biological rather than economic. Others object on the grounds that girls have fewer responsibilities than men: true enough, they simply cannot afford them. Yet we can all remember a time when cheap girls were working, more expensive men were semi-idle on the dole or in camps, and mothers of families had to assume responsibility for finding nearly enough food for the kids. How many of them did it is a mystery; and probably had best remain a mystery. "The rate for the job" is primarily a man’s demand. For the majority of girls paid employment is just a brief transition from dependence on one man to dependence on another, too rapid and too much filled with illusory independence for them to grasp the significance of the wages question, to realise that the further they undercut the price of labour, the longer they must wait for a man to rescue them from poverty.

R.

GILBERD

(Okaihau).

Sir,-It would appear that some of the contributors to your discussion on "Equal Pay for Equal Work" have failed to take into account many things. Mr. Hearnshaw says that under the "present social and economic set-up he is not in fayour of equal pay for equal work." Then it would seem that, to be fair, Mr. Hearnshaw and others agreeing with him should advocate a differentiation between the prices that women must pay for food, hi Mi Mi i i ei i i i i i

ett i i i i he he a a ee | clothes and amusements, and the prices paid for these things by male workers. As far as the job is concerned it is the work done that matters, and the responsibility entailed in the contract itself which should be paid for; what is important is the job that is done. Has Mr. Hearnshaw concerned himself with the fact that many highly paid Government officials, bank officers, all types and kinds /of executives, have few or no dependants and what they are paid for is the job they do and the responsibility entailed in that job — their social responsibility is only incidental in the viewpoint of their employers. Even if it were true that female workers both in the economic and social spheres have generally less responsibility, is there any virtue in such a position that Mr. Hearnshaw should see little or no reason for its discontinuance, Strangely enough marriage and nursing are the only jobs that women are propagandised into-one has to be born to either of them to "make a go of it." All women desire a happy marriage; marriage is the one job in which we feel we attain true dignity. When we cannot attain to that dignity, would Mr. Hearnshaw and others like him deny us the solace of a well-paid job and a sptr to our economic ambitions for fear that we, in our independence, might prove a shocking example to young women who might otherwise marry and become mothers of the race?

NADA MARTIN

(Christchurch),