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Women
interested in the Suffrage question frequently find, among those who have
signed the petition asking for the suffrage, many who will say, "I
did not want it for myself. I signed it for the sake of women less happy
than I, for the working women, etc." If such an one has found out for
herself by personal effort in investigation, or by study, or upon reliable
authority, that the working women do both need and wish for the ballot,
she may be justified in signing her name as she did. But if she has done
it upon mere hearsay, or upon acceptance of floating opinion sentimentally
held, or with a vague sense that she may be helping some one, somehow,
somewhere, sometime, is she not taking a grave responsibility upon
herself, this of trying to, do something for others when she is not
definitely and specifically convinced that it will be what these others
need ? Many working women, it is true, have been told that the ballot will
bring them better wages, protection against the brutality of men, and the
sure sympathy and protection of women themselves. But is this true ? Does
a thoughtful woman believe that these changes call he brought about "
in a mechanical sort of a way"? Must not an improvement in wages come
about " through social anal industrial changes," and not by
legislative enactment?
The
question of the alleged difference in wages paid to men and women for the
same work is constantly quoted as an example of injustice that should be
righted, and yet those who have investigated most thoroughly this alleged
difference, assert that in very few cases is there 'Such a uniformity of
condition between men and women workers as to permit of conclusive
comparison of their wages for equal work. The chief difficulty in the
problem is what seems to be the impossibility of discovering any but a
very few instances in which men and women do precisely similar work in the
same place at the same epoch.
Women
often earn less than men because they produce less, and what they produce
is usually valued in the market at a lower rate, perhaps because of its
smaller quantity, sometimes because of its inferior quality.
In
one occupation, that of teaching, there seems to be more ground for the
charge of unjust proportion in compensation than in any other, but even
here, the larger supply of women workers, making the competition more
intense, the temporary and intermittent character of their work due to
their tendency to marry, and the disability resulting from a less degree
of physical vitality, is a partial explanation of what at first sight
seems wholly unjust.
Taking
women's work in general, the following are some of the reasons why women's
wages are less than men's:1
1.
Women have a practical monopoly of a great many of the more unskilled and
poorly paid industrial occupations, as for example, the garment trades,
particularly the making of plain clothing and under clothing, and in
general those occupations which are included under the so-called
"sweating system."
a.
Women are in a large measure supplemental wage earners, many of them being
partially maintained out of incomes other than their own and hence will
work for smaller pay than men.
3.
Women usually look forward to matrimony, and consequently do not often
take the pains to learn all occupation thoroughly.
4.
The supply of female labor is always large in proportion to the demand.
5.
Physical disability makes the labor of women often less even, continuous
and excellent, and therefore of less value than that of men.
1
Prof. E. B. L. Gould.
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