SEX AND GENDER
Manuscript Sources from the Public Record Office

Part 3: Equal Opportunities and Pay (ADM, AIR, BL, BN, CAB, CO, ED, FO, HO, LAB, LCO, MAF, MEPO, MH, MUN, PIN, PREM AND T 1 files)

PROFESSOR HAROLD L SMITH
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON-VICTORIA

Equal Pay and Opportunities

Equal pay has been a vexed issue throughout the twentieth century. Prior to 1900 women were normally paid less than men even in those rare instances in which they did identical work. But because most jobs were sex typed as either men's work or women's work, there were relatively few instances in which women had an opportunity to demonstrate that they were capable of doing equal work. Although gendered pay was challenged by the late-Victorian womens movement, much of the pressure for equal pay prior to the First World War came from male trade unionists who viewed it as a strategy for preventing job competition from women.

During the First World War, the labour shortage forced employers to hire women for jobs that had been considered men's work. The trade unions responded by insisting that women employed on men's jobs be granted equal pay, and this was agreed to by the government in the March 1915 Treasury Agreement. This stimulated much discussion of the equal pay principle, but it was primarily in the context of protecting the men's wage rates; little consideration was given to economic justice for women workers. After qualified women aged 30 and above were enfranchised in 1918, the Coalition Government sought their support through the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. Although it ostensibly removed barriers to womens employment, such as the marriage bar, the Act contained language that enabled employers to continue discriminating on gender and marital grounds.

The Second World War stimulated renewed interest in the equal pay issue. After the government adopted a policy of paying sex differentiated rates of compensation to civilians injured by enemy action, feminists formed an Equal Compensation Campaign Committee which pressured the government into granting equal compensation in 1943. Following this undermining of the sex differential principle, the House of Commons voted for an amendment to the 1944 Education Bill to establish equal pay for teachers. But the government then intervened to prevent equal pay. It secured the defeat of the equal pay amendment by requiring a second vote that was treated as a vote of confidence in the government. Then, when Parliament remained sympathetic toward equal pay legislation, the government prevented action by establishing a Royal Commission on equal Pay which was authorized to study the issue but not to make recommendations.

Following the war the feminist Equal Pay Campaign Committee and the trade union Co-ordinating Committee on Equal Pay organized the pressure for equal pay. By 1950 the two leading political parties had endorsed the principle of equal pay, but both avoided making any commitment as to how soon they would implement it. In March 1954, R. A. Butler, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative Government, urged the cabinet to introduce equal pay in the public services, warning his colleagues that if the Conservatives didnt act, the next Labour Government would. The government announced in 1955 that equal pay would be introduced in the public services in stages, with full equal pay to be granted in 1961.

During the 1960s pressure to extend equal pay to the private sector came primarily from the EEC and female trade unionists. The 1957 Treaty of Rome that created the EEC required member states to establish equal pay for equal work. When the Labour Government applied for EEC membership in 1967, it planned to introduce equal pay legislation so that it would be in compliance, but abandoned the reform after its application was rejected. Pressure from militant trade union and Labour Party women revived the prospects for equal pay. In 1968 female sewing-machinists at Ford's Dagenham plant went on strike for a regrading of their jobs, and for equal pay. In the following months women workers elsewhere initiated equal pay strikes while trade unionists established the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Womens Equal Rights to encourage women to demand equal pay. The perception that this was the beginning of a new surge of militancy to obtain equal pay strengthened Employment Secretary Barbara Castle's hand when she urged the cabinet to forestall labour unrest by introducing an equal bill.

The Labour Government's 1970 Equal Pay Act stated than an employee was entitled to equal pay by 1975 if the work she did was the same or broadly similar (like work) to that of a man in the same establishment or if a job evaluation rated their work as equivalent. It is difficult to distinguish the Acts impact on womens wages from other factors, but between 1970 and 1977 womens hourly earnings, excluding overtime, rose from 63.1 to 75.7 per cent of mens earnings. But the Act failed to help many women workers. Most women continued to be employed on jobs considered womens work in which there were no male comparators. The Act gave employers a new incentive to sex segregate jobs because they could continue to pay women lower rates if they did womens work for which there was no male comparator.

The Treaty of Rome's equal pay clause was ambiguous as to whether it applied to work of equal value or only when equal work was being done. In 1975 the EC issued an Equal Pay Directive clarifying that equal pay was required when work of equal value was performed. When the British Government declined to modify Britains equal pay law to reflect this wider interpretation, the European Court of Justice in 1982 found Britain in violation of this Directive and ordered it to revise Britain's equal pay law.

Under EC pressure, the Conservative Government reluctantly issued the 1983 Equal Pay (Amendment) Regulations stating that an employee was entitled to equal pay if her work was of equal value to that of a male comparator unless the employer could justify the pay differential under one of the defences specified in the Regulations. But unequal pay remained legal if the employer demonstrated that the pay differential reflected a material factor other than sex. The Regulations also added a new defence for unequal pay by explicitly including market forces as one of the material factors allowed. Equal pay law remained unsatisfactory at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and it is likely that there will be further legislation on this issue.

Sources:

Fredman, Sandra, Women and the Law (Clarendon Press, 1997).
Meehan, Elizabeth, Womens Rights at Work: Campaigns and Policy in Britain and the United States (Macmillan, 1985).
Smith, Harold L, British Feminism and the Equal Pay Issue in the 1930s, in the Womens History Review, vol. 5 (no. 1, 1996), pp 97-110.
Smith, Harold L, The Problem of "Equal Pay for Equal Work" in Great Britain during World War II, in the Journal of Modern History, vol. 53 (December 1981), pp 652-672.
Smith, Harold L, The Womanpower Problem in Britain During the Second World War, in the Historical Journal, vol. 27 (December 1984), pp. 925-945.
Smith, Harold L. The Politics of Conservative Reform: The Equal Pay for Equal Work Issue, 1945-1955, in the Historical Journal, vol. 35 (June 1992), pp. 401-415.