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Women's Wages
"Give her the wages of going on, and not to die."
Women's Wages
WILLIAM SMART, M.A.
LECTURER ON POLITICAL ECONOMY IN QUEEN MARGARET COLLEGE AND IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE, ST. VINCENT STREET PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY 1892
A paper read before the PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GLASGOW, 9th Dec., 1891.
WOMEN'S WAGES.
It is not necessary to prove that women's wages are, as a rule, much under those of men. In the textile trades of Great Britain, which constitute the largest department of women's work, the average of women's wages is probably--in Scotland it is certainly--about ten shillings per week. This labour is not by any means unskilled, as anyone who has ever seen a spinning or weaving factory knows. Twenty shillings per week, however, is a low average for a man possessing any degree of skill whatever.
In a paper read before the British Association at Cardiff, Mr. Sidney Webb gave some valuable statistics on the subject. Women workers he divides into four classes--manual labourers, routine mental workers, artistic workers, and intellectual workers. The two latter classes may be dismissed in a word. Sex has little to do in determining the wages of their work. A novelist, a poet, a writer of any sort, is under no disadvantage that she is a woman, while in many departments of artistic work women have an obvious advantage. But in the third class, that of routine mental workers, Mr. Webb finds that women's earnings are invariably less than men's. In the Post Office and Telegraph Departments, in the Savings Banks, and in the Government offices generally, where women do precisely similar work with men, and are sometimes, as in ledger work, acknowledged to do it better, they invariably earn much less. The largest experiment yet made in this direction is that of the Prudential Life Assurance Office, which began in 1872 to substitute women clerks for the lower grades of men clerks. There are now 243 ladies employed in routine clerical work, which they are said to do more efficiently than men. The salaries run thus:--?32 for the first year, ?42 for the second, ?52 for the third, and ?60 on promotion--probably half of what men might be expected to accept. In Glasgow lady typists and shorthand writers are offering their services from 9.30 till 5, with one hour for dinner, for ?25. In the teaching profession women almost invariably receive lower remuneration than men. The Education Department Report of 1888-90 gives the average wage of teachers throughout England and Wales as ?119 for men and ?75 for women. Similarly low salaries are found under the London School Board, in the Secondary Schools, and in girls' schools generally as compared with boys' schools.
The exception noted by Mr. Webb is interesting and, I think, suggestive. In the United States, where women teachers often alternate with men in the same school, the salaries of women are habitually lower. But in the State of Wyoming, where women have a vote, the salaries are equal.
Coming now to the manual workers, Mr. Webb takes the statistics furnished by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labour in 1884. These give the average of 17,430 employ?s in 110 establishments in Great Britain, and 35,902 employ?s in 210 establishments in Massachusetts, representing in both cases 24 different manufacturing industries. The women's wages show a proportion of one-third to two-thirds the amount earned by men, the nearest approach to equality being in textiles--cotton goods, hosiery, and carpetings in Great Britain, woollen and worsted goods in Massachusetts. Without going further into statistics, I think we may assume the fact of a great disparity between men's and women's wages, and go on to ask the reason of it.
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