Wages for Women Workers

Abstract

Women's wages should be determined in the same manner as men's wages. As Miss Mary Van Kleeck, Director of the Woman in Industry Service of the Department of Labor has well said, Wages should be determined on the basis of occupation and not on the basis of sex. Women doing the same work as men should receive the same wages with such proportionate increases as the men are receiving in the same industry. Slight changes made in the process or in the arrangement of work should not be regarded as justifying a lower wage for a woman than for a man unless statistics of production show that the output for the job in question is less when women are employed than when men dre employed. If a difference in output iQ demonstrated, the difference in the wage rate should be based upon the difference in production for the job as a whole and not determined arbitrarily. During the period of the war, employers have been outspoken in their praises of women's work. They have said very truthfully that the women who have taken men's places have been just as efficient and in many instances have done more and better work than the men whom they replaced or those with whom they worked side by side. But their attitude on wages has been curiously illogical. For example, in one city a manufacturer with very important war contracts wanted to employ women for night work. In that state the law forbids the employment of women between the hours of ten p.m. and six a.m. The employer gave as his reasons for urging night work that women were far better workers than men, that they did more work and better work and came to the factory with greater regularity, that he had a night shift of men