The first equal pay woman?
by Jenny
I was interested to read an article today about Edith Kent who was apparently the first lady to receive equal pay to a man. This of course was some time ago, in fact back in the forties. For those of us who weren’t even around when the equal pay legislation came in, it is hard to imagine that there would have been a seperate standard pay for women and men for doing the same role.
The war meant that a lot of women were out there doing roles which couldn’t be filled by men because they were off fighting. I think really the war has done a lot for equal rights because although most women were removed once the men returned after the war (including Edith), they still showed to society that women were capable of carrying out roles other than those seen at the time as ‘acceptable’ for a woman.
Edith worked as a welder at a dockyard in Plymouth during the Second World War and was actually quoted as saying that she was embarrassed about the wage at the time. Shows how things have changed!
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This is similar to the gains made by the suffragete movement after women undertook vital and, perhaps more importantly, visible work in munitions factories during World War One.
It’s hard to maintain a fundamentally irrational system of discrimination when a little thing called necessity instantly highlights its flaws.
Another example would be the contribution of black soldiers in World War Two and the impetus this gave to the civil rights movement in the USA. How could segregation be justified in the USA as black soldiers fought and died for the country against (as another important point) an ideology of facism, discrimination and racism?
A more interesting and controversial point would be role economic (rather than military) necessity played (over and above human compassion) in the demise of the Atlantic slave trade.
The deeper question is whether it is possible for humanity to move forward without a prod from either the barrel of a gun or the invisible hand of the market? Karl Marx thought about it quite a bit…
Will said at November 27th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I didn’t know we were paid the same. When did that happen?
Jo said at November 28th, 2008 at 8:28 am