Women’s wages continue to be a hot topic. The other day, I heard Desi Lydic mention the over 30% pay gap between men and women. There is a lot of interesting history behind women’s wages, and not all of it follows the narrative of discrimination and exploitation. Let’s talk about how women achieved equal pay with men in the past. This content will be broken up into two parts; pre- and post-World War 2.
Pre-World War 1
Until the development of industrial machines after the American Civil War, women were almost exclusively housewives. The simple reason for this was the work required to bring home a living wage generally required the larger and stronger bodies of men. However, as smaller machines started being built that could perform the work that a person could control, the need for men specifically to be employed in factories or manufacturing began to decline significantly.
When this happened though, factories still did not begin employing adult women. Factories first began employing children to work industrial machinery before asking adult women to join the labor force. Consider the following quote from a manager of a factory in 1918.
The Underwood Typewriter Co., Hartford, Conn., has undertaken the
employment of women on a part-time basis, such as will permit them to
attend to their household cares to a reasonable extent
It was de facto understood that women had inescapable duties at home. Children would have no such duties, and as such, are freely employable as per the law of the land. This dynamic is discussed further here in the introductory paragraphs of Women in Modern Industry published in 1915 in London.
Little attention has been given until quite recent times to the
position of the woman worker and the special problems concerning her
industrial and commercial employment. The historical material relating
to the share of women in industry is extremely scanty. Women in
mediaeval times must have done a very large share of the total work
necessary for carrying on social existence, but the work of men was more
specialised, more differentiated, more picturesque. It thus claimed and
obtained a larger share of the historian’s attention. The introduction
of machinery in the eighteenth century effected great changes, and for
the first time the reactions of the work on the workers began to be
considered. Women and children who had previously been employed in their
own homes or in small workshops were now collected in factories, drilled
to work in large numbers together. The work was not at first very
different, but the environment was enormously altered. The question of
the child in industry at first occupied attention almost to the
exclusion of women. But the one led naturally to the other. The woman in
industry could no longer be ignored: she had become an economic force.
Women are also the first architects; the hut in widely different parts
of the world—among Kaffirs, Fuegians, Polynesians, Kamtchatdals—is built
by women. Women are everywhere the primitive agriculturists, and work in
the fields of Europe to-day.
Women seem to have originated pottery, while men usually ornamented and
improved it. Woman “was at first, and is now, the universal cook,
preserving food from decomposition and doubling the longevity of man. Of
the bones at last she fabricates her needles and charms.... From the
grasses around her cabin she constructs the floor-mat, the mattress and
the screen, the wallet, the sail. She is the mother of all spinners,
weavers, upholsterers, sail-makers.
In fact, in many instances, it was unions themselves preventing women from entering the workforce.
Hargreaves’ spinning jenny, Cartwright’s combing machine, Jacquard’s
loom, to mention no others, were at different times destroyed by an
angry mob. With desperate energy the unions long opposed the
introduction of women workers. What drove the men to these hopeless
struggles was the lowering of wages that they discerned to be the
probable, nay, certain result of both changes.
Let’s fast forward to the Great War.
World War 1
Fascinating changes began happening to women, their wages, and their visibility in the labor force during the Great War. As men in America were drafted, valuable skills and human capital was taken from employers and repurposed overseas. This left America with a severe shortage of skilled labor, which was desperately needed to end the Great War. Child labor laws had been enacted and for the first time, adult women were being asked to join the labor force in manufacturing materials for the war efforts.
During this time, the US Government petitioned employers to build schools for training unskilled workers, both men and women. In 1918, a collection of responses from various employers about the states of their schools and success rates in employing women was published. Let’s read and discuss some excerpts.
WRIGHT-MARTIN AIRCRAFT CORPORATION
The women are very enthusiastic and the foremen are highly pleased. In
one branch the foreman advised, when asked how things were going: “You
can give me thirty more women right away; they are all right,” In
another branch a foreman advised that he would not exchange a good share
of the women in his department for an equal number of the best men he
had on his floor.
BROWN & SHARPE MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Experience has shown that there are advantages in having both men
and women in the same department, as it tends to hold the same standard
of workmanship and speed for women as for men, while it is believed that
having a separate department for women may establish a separate and
lower standard, the tendency being to make more allowance for women
because of sex. The results seem to show that it is not at all necessary
that separate standards should be established and that in some lines of
work even more can be expected of women than of men because of their
nimble fingers and quickness of motion. As to questions of discipline,
where the two sexes are employed in the same work-room, little or no
difficulty is experienced under capable foremanship.
This was written in 1918.
Actual results have proved that the fears in the minds of some that
there would be opposition on the part of foremen and workmen to the
employment of women in the shop were ungrounded. A foreman remarked to a
visitor: “See that girl working beside the man assembling speed
indicators? She is working with him so as to learn all the requirements,
and he knows that she is to have his job as soon as she has become
sufficiently proficient, but he is helping her in every way possible. Of
course, we shall find other work for the man; and often, with the
present shortage of help, such a change of work can be in the line of
promotion.” This illustrates the spirit which is practically universal
throughout the shop, and which has been an important factor in bringing
about the success of the plan.
While the money question—the earning power—is uppermost in the minds of
the majority, many of the women show also a distinct ambition to equal
or excel men in the work they do. Soon after the employment of women was
begun in the gear department, a girl who was cutting sprockets on
a gear-cutting machine became discouraged and said she was afraid she
could not make a success of the job. Her foreman was surprised and said
to her, “We have not made any complaint as to your work, have we?” “No,”
she said, “but the man who worked on the night job turned out 105
pieces, while the best I could do was only 85 pieces a day.” Her foreman
asked if she realized that the man on the night force was working three
hours more per day than she was, and after learning this she felt less
discouraged with the results she had obtained.
This is fascinating insight into the actual day-to-day work and wages of women directly compared to the men doing the same work.
Already several women are employed in the toolmaking department. One of
these employees, who was operating a lathe turning out tool-steel
blanks for bits and reamers, doing her own setting up and measuring,
evinced enthusiasm for machine shop work, showing, in reply to
questions, that her work was opening up a new field in which she took
especial interest and she remarked, “No more housework for me,” with
such feeling that it was evident her interests strongly leaned in a
mechanical direction. Girls in the toolmaking department are working on
universal milling machines, surface grinders, etc., as well as lathes.
Some of the younger girls throughout the works are employed as
messengers.
No more housework for her.
THE BLANCHARD MACHINE COMPANY
We also have a number of women in the shop whom we have taken in without
their having any previous experience in machine work, and taught them
various operations, such as broaching, bench work, drilling, turning
bevel gears, vise work, cutting long threads, and work of a similar
nature, and have found them very satisfactory on this class of work.
We have endeavored to teach them the rudiments of this work before
putting them on to regular production work, but after they master the
first part of it, all the work that is done is on a regular production
basis, and we have found in a great many cases that they have been able
to reduce the time taken per piece to a very marked degree over what has
formerly been taken by men.
Take these paragraphs into account while knowing women at this time were often working towards wages dictated by how many pieces they completed, not an hourly or daily wage. If women commonly outperformed men in piece-work and were paid on piece-work basis, they would make more money.
BURROUGHS ADDING MACHINE COMPANY
As the girls graduate from the starting department, or school, they
don the regular shop uniform, consisting of a suit of overalls, and take
their place alongside the men and under the same general conditions as
to hours of labor and rates of pay. This stepping-up method of training
the unskilled females has been a success with us as far as it goes, and
has enabled us to increase our production 50 per cent. for the current
year in spite of the acute skilled labor situation.
From April 1, when the training school was established, up to the
present time, 412 young women have been received in Department 35, and
260 have been trained and transferred to other departments. At all times
there are about forty or fifty young women undergoing training. Only
nine young women have been returned to Department 35 for further
training since April 1. After receiving additional training these nine
were again placed and in no case has one failed for the second time. It
is just a matter of finding the right place for the right young women,
and then there is no question about them making good on the jobs,
as they are proving every day.
In conclusion, tribute must be paid to the 1,200 women in our factory
whose earnest desire to help their country in its time of need, and
whose mentality and courage have enabled them to make a success of a
kind of employment entirely foreign to them on the general conception of
their abilities.
That last sentence speaks volumes.
Quote.
Whose mentality and courage have enabled them to make a success of a kind of employment entirely foreign to them on the general conception of their abilities.
Unquote.
UNDERWOOD TYPEWRITER CO., INC.
The Underwood Typewriter Co., Hartford, Conn., has undertaken the
employment of women on a part-time basis, such as will permit them to
attend to their household cares to a reasonable extent. Further, they
are offering employment to women having small children between two and
one-half and nine years of age, having given over a space in their plant
for the care of such children throughout the work day, practicing the
kindergarten plan. They have found many who are willing to engage with
them under this plan, and are pleased to report the whole general scheme
is working out well. Many of the women of either class have become
expert in skilled work with but a limited time for training.
Daycare in the workplace in 1918.
THE NATIONAL CASH REGISTER COMPANY
While in the Training School the students are paid the regular starting
rate for women, and after they enter the factory and become more
efficient their rate increases until they can do the work that a man
previously did both as regards quality and quantity and they receive a
man’s wage.
Equal pay for equal work in 1918.
THE H. E. HARRIS ENGINEERING CO.
The women show a better spirit and give a much better production, at
least three times as much as the men do on the same work.
The two photographs of the same woman, Mrs. H——, show her in one
photograph lapping a thread gauge which has to be correct within .0002.
She is about four times as proficient as any man that we have in the
place. The other photograph shows her measuring the same thread gauge
between the lapping operation with the three-wire system, which is
rather a difficult feat of measurement.
Very impressive.
LINCOLN MOTOR COMPANY
During the training period they have been paid the regular rate for
women, thirty cents per hour, which rate maintains after they enter the
shop until such time as they are placed upon a piece-work basis.
This is a great demonstration of how a woman may end up making the same or more than a man, even though she began with the lesser pay. Would her prospects of making the same or more as a man on a piece-work basis be increased or decreased had she expected the same rate of pay as a man on day one?
The school is favorably looked upon by all of the employees, and in
those cases where it is found that a woman is not working out well upon
the work to which the school has assigned her, and is returned to it for
further instruction, she has in all cases gone back to it with a
cheerfulness and willingness that is both surprising and gratifying.
The writer is of the opinion that the school in this factory has come to
stay and that when we build up our organization and get through the
strenuous times we are now experiencing, the advantage of the vestibule
school instruction will be given men employees as well as women.
DETROIT LUBRICATOR COMPANY
The women trained in this way are producing excellent results and are
making as good pay as the men on the same piece-work. At some types of
inspection they excel any men we ever had on the jobs for speed and
accuracy.
Equal pay for equal work.
This next quote I found incredibly ironic given rhetoric today and in the past. Remember how we previously discussed women being paid more for piece-work because they were simply able to produce more pieces.
In a large factory making power machines the men from one department
threatened to strike because “the women were being paid higher wages
than the men.” Investigation disclosed that all were working at the same
piece rates but the women were producing more.
Hilarious. Darkly, and unrelated to women completely, this note was also included.
We have two men, with only one arm each! (after proper training) doing
more work than the average two men.
Consider; are these men better off being employed or unemployed in 1918? If these men were also being paid on piece-work basis, as I expect, while producing more than the average two men, is that exploitation?
INDEPENDENT PNEUMATIC TOOL COMPANY
To date we have enrolled 109 students; 81 men, 28 women. The women
workers have proven that they can in the emergency take the place of
practically all our male workers, that is with from five to ten days of
intensive training. We have placed women on such machines as Gear
Hobbers, Screw Machines, Grinders, Drill Presses and are well satisfied
with the result obtained. The percentage of scrap material has been less
by the female workers than by the male.
Scrappy women.
CINCINNATI MILLING MACHINE CO
We find that the women who are selected for this sort of work just about
equal the men. They show considerable enthusiasm for the work, as
is indicated by a less degree of lateness and absenteeism than that of
the men, but we have not had enough experience as yet to say anything
definite in this regard.
It is also perhaps true that we are taking greater pains instructing the
women than we would in the ordinary course take in instructing green
men.
This is a very interesting and mature insight from a foreman in a manufacturing line.
ILLINOIS TOOL WORKS
At the present time we have in our factory about 75 female employees, on
Lathes, Milling Machines, Grinders, Finishing Gauges, Lapping, etc.,
also inspectors, timekeepers and stock chasers.
Since your last visit we have employed a trained nurse who is in charge
of the employment and welfare work of all women employed in the factory.
This we have found has given us much better results and can truthfully
say that with very few exceptions, every girl employed is certainly
making good.
We have one instance where a man employed in the screw machine
department, employed in that capacity for about a year, was having
trouble in not producing on his machine. We had him exchange machines
with a woman who had had a month’s experience and found that she
practically doubled his output the first day.
GLEASON WORKS
When you came to Rochester we were very much impressed with the
suggestions you made as to the introduction of women into industry. We
sent two representatives together with others from Rochester to Dayton,
as you advised, to investigate the conditions there and also in
Cincinnati. The excellent arrangements made by the Cincinnati
manufacturers to relieve the shortage of labor by placing women at work
in machine shops and elsewhere were extremely interesting.
After learning what had been done we started using women in our machine
shop in line with your idea and the results have been very satisfactory.
It is not a question of economy with us but of releasing men for
other work in the foundry which women cannot perform. We believe that an
intensive training of two weeks would enable women to turn out
practically as much work as men are now doing.
THE WILLYS-MORROW COMPANY, INC.
We have about twenty women learning how to run automatic screwing
machines. These women have been grinding their own tools.
Conclusion
None of this is brought up to discount the real discrimination and exploitation of women that has happened across history. Almost every excerpt included here discusses ensuring equal pay for equal work and other incredibly progressive ideals. In the largest understatement of the war by a member of a British Commission whom had visited the United States.
England delayed the winning of the war two years by delaying the
introduction of women one year.
In the final two years of the war, almost 5 million men were killed.