Perhaps the strongest complaints of women’s wages in governmental service were made in connection with the women clerks taken on by the Civil Service. In 1917 they received only 20 to 26s. ($4.80 to $6.24) for ordinary clerical work, and 30s. ($7.20) for supervision of clerical work which involved considerable responsibility. Women were found who were paid 20s. ($4.80) for the same work for which men had been receiving 30s.-40s. ($7.20-$9.60). The Women’s Industrial Council even found it advisable to call a conference on the matter, and to form a committee to take up the question with those responsible. By the end of the war the weekly wages of first-class clerks had gone up to between 50s. and 60s. ($12-$14.40).
The wages paid women substitutes for men in trades in which neither legal regulation nor agreements existed are difficult to discover. Bread, rubber, confectionery and saw-milling are important examples of trades of this sort. In such cases the Joint Committee of Industrial Women’s Organizations believed that “rather more is gained than the current wage for women. There is no reason whatever to suppose that the rates approximate to the rates of the men displaced.”[148] The factory inspectors in 1916 stated that in a few cases there were complaints of very low wages, and women replacing men in bottle works were said to be earning only 11s. ($2.64) a week.[149] On the other hand, an investigation of clerical workers’ war wages showed that many bookkeepers replacing men were receiving the same pay. The wages of stenographers increased perhaps 10s. ($2.40) a week during the war.[150]
As was the case before the war, wages in agriculture remained lower than in most industrial occupations, and, as has been indicated, probably checked the entrance of women into the occupation. In the early days of the war, many farmers asked for women at 15s. ($3.60) a week. At its organization early in 1917 the Land Army established a minimum rate of 18s. ($4.28), later raised to 20s. ($4.80). Through the Corn Production Act, which arranged for the establishment of a minimum wage for farm labor as a condition of guaranteeing grain prices to the farmers, the wages of farm labor were brought under legal regulation in the latter months of the war. On October 10 and 11, 1918, a rate of 5d. (10 cents) an hour or about 22s. 6d. ($5.40) a week was fixed for experienced adult women workers in England and Wales.[151] Six pence an hour was allowed in a few counties in the north of England in which higher rates prevailed. No special provision was made for cases in which the women took up work previously done by men, for whom the legal rates were 30s.-35s. ($7.20-$8.40) weekly. In the circumstances it is not surprising that the Board of Agriculture stated that “there is a certain danger in women’s work as a cheap form of labor.”
The smallest increases in wages occurred in the trades in which large numbers of women were employed prior to the war. In some cases, to be sure, as in power machine operating, steadier work and overtime made earnings considerably higher, and in a trade as far removed from the influence of munitions as cigar making estimated weekly earnings rose as high as 30s. to £3 ($7.20-$14.40) weekly during the war. But in most cases, actual changes in wage rates were small, and were generally in the form of a “war bonus” of a few shillings a week which obviously was not sufficient to cover the rise in prices. Wages for learners were said to have increased more than those for experienced workers. The necessity of a decided rise in wages to keep workers from transferring to men’s trades made itself felt but very slowly. Wages for dressmakers, milliners, pottery and laundry workers and kitchen hands in restaurants were less than 25s. ($6.00) a week at the end of the war, which meant less than 10s. ($2.40) at prewar standards.
But taking the average over the whole field of industry, women’s real wages probably increased somewhat during the war. The average weekly wage of women and girls in seventeen important nonmunitions trades, according to returns made by employers to the Department of Labour Statistics, was 12s. 8d. ($3.54) in May-August, 1915, and 23s. 6d. ($5.64), in May-August, 1918. Among this group of trades the highest weekly wage in May-August, 1918, was 25s. 8d. ($6.16) in ready-made tailoring, and the lowest 16s. 10d. ($4.04) in glass manufacturing.[152] “They were nearer 35s. than 30s. weekly toward the end of the war,” says the British War Cabinet report. This amount, roughly equivalent to over 15s. before the war, contrasts favorably with the estimate of less than 11s. a week as the average wage of working women in 1912. Nor were real wages reduced through unemployment through the war period. Another evidence of a relative gain is the rise in women’s wages from “somewhat less than half men’s in 1914 to rather more than two-thirds” in 1918.[153] The change is ascribed to government intervention, and it is noticeable, indeed, that with wages in munitions work, government work, agriculture and a number of sweated trades all regulated by law, not far from two million women workers had their pay fixed by this method. Such an improvement does not, of course, answer the question of whether or not the women replacing men received equivalent pay.
The Equal Pay Question
It will have been evident from the discussion of women’s wages during the war and of the “dilution” problem that “equal pay for equal work” was the chief bone of contention in the replacement of men workers by women substitutes. The question is not always entirely simple. In a large number of cases of substitution industrial methods were reorganized or the woman did not do precisely the same amount and variety of work that the man did. The goal desired by the advocates of “equal pay for equal work” would perhaps be more accurately expressed by the term “economic equality between men and women.” Realizing, in fact, that wherever changes were made on the introduction of women the equal pay basis was difficult to determine, its supporters during the latter part of the war abandoned the term and spoke instead of “pay by the occupation and not by the sex.” But whatever the phrase, the objects were the same, to prevent women from displacing men merely because they were cheaper and at the same time to insure women equal vocational opportunities with men.
Somewhat varied opinions were expressed as to the relative efficiency of men and women on the same kinds of work. The writers of the War Cabinet report on women in industry, a fairly conservative group, felt that the substitution of women in manual labor and out door occupations “was not, on the whole, a success.” They excepted, however, farm laborers and bus conductors, provided the women received sufficient wages to “keep them in the healthy condition required.” On skilled processes, even in April, 1919, it was not felt that there had been time for the women to gain the training and experience on which a sound judgment could be based. Substitution on routine and repetition processes was considered generally successful, women even excelling men in operations which required “refined and delicate manipulation” and being better able to endure monotony.
Three successive reports by the British Association for the Advancement of Science gave increasing recognition to the efficiency of the woman worker. In the first report published in August, 1915, the Association felt that on the whole adult women were less productive than men, except on routine, monotonous work, though young girls were generally considered more helpful than boys of the same ages.
In April, 1916, in its second report, the British Association was not so certain of the lesser capability of women workers. It quoted one railway official to the effect that women car cleaners could not get through as much work as men, but other railway officials believed that “what women lacked in quantity of work they made up in quality.” They could do a surprising amount also “if they had sufficient wages to feed and clothe themselves properly.”[154] Women shop assistants were found as satisfactory as men on all work within their strength. But it was believed that the managerial positions in stores would continue to be reserved for men, who were more likely to be permanent. The statement in the third report of the British Association is that “generally, employers who have had experience speak very favourably of the work which the women are accomplishing. Where labour difficulties have in times past been acute, they tend even to be extravagant in their praise of women.”[155]