EQUAL PAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22539, 2 October 1936, Page 4

EQUAL PAY

AN OLD STRUGGLE J Woman's struggle for equal pay with men is one of long standing. "The experience ol the post office shows that women are well qualified for clerical work of a less important character and are satisfied with a lower rate of pay than is expected by men similarly employed." This remark, taken from the Report" of the Civil Service Inquiry and quoted and italicised in the "Women's Suffrage Journal" of 1875 marks one of the first domands made by women for equal pay for equal work. Before that date inequality of pay may be said to have been taken for granted, accepted As the result of a variety of causes. In the days which preceded the industrial resolution women, both married and single, worked alongside their menfolk or on their own account in some domestic industry such as spinning, lace-making or weaving, or on the land. As assistants to their husbands their wage was included in the family wage; as independent workers their wages were presumed to bo merely supplementary, and as a result they wero low. After the revolution fierce competition, lack of organisation, and the employment of children kept down tho wages of women who worked in factories and workshops; most occupations were closed to women of the middle and upper classes, and no woman who belonged to these classes could undertake any paid work without losing social caste.

The following quotation taken from a letter written by Sophia Jex Blake about 1875 to her father, a man of considerable enlightenment. whero women's work was concerned, shows how strong was tho feeling that women should be supported by their menfolk "You, as a man," she wrote, "did your work and received your payment and no one thought it any degradation, but a fair exchange. Whj should the difference of my sex alter the laws of right and honour? .... There is the honest, and L believe perfectly justifiable, pride of earning."