This is my favourite quote from my (as yet unfinished with three days to go) dissertation. From the wage census of 1906.
“Even where men and women are employed side by side in the same trade they are usually engaged on different processes. The points where overlapping occurs are, however, sufficiently numerous to enable us to make the generalisation that in those industrial processes in which both men and women are employed the efficiency or output of the man is greater than that of the woman worker. In order words, the man is worth more, and his higher wages are an expression of this fact.
Even where the man’s dexterity or skill is no greater than that of the woman’s his wages still tend to be greater. Usually, if an employer can get both men and women workers he is prepared to pay somewhat more to a man even though the man’s output per hour is no greater than that of a woman. Put bluntly, a male worker is less bother than is a female worker. A female staff is always to some extent an anxiety and a source of trouble to an employer in a way that a male staff is not, and to many employers it has the great defect of being less able to cope with sudden rushes of work. Men are, after all, made of harder stuff than women, and only in the grossest of cases do we ever give a thought to men being over-worked. With women, however, not only the Factory Act, but also decent feeling requires an employer to be vigilant to see that undue strain is not placed on them.
The greater remuneration of men in those occupations where both men and women are employed on the same processes is then due to the fact that the men are preferred to the women, and employers are accordingly willing to pay more to get them.”
Here are some paintings of a potbank by Sylvia Pankhurst to give this blog entry a little balance...
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