ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: The Role of British Economists in the ‘Equal Pay For Equal Work’ Controversy
Author: Chassonnery-Zaïgouche Cléo, Cot Annie L.
The “equal pay for equal work” controversy on women’s wages was both a central political issue and a subject of many theoretical discussions in economics since the late 19th century. Before WWII, four Government committees and a vote at the House of Commons in favour of the principle of equal pay in the Civil Service and local government could not succeed in leading, neither to a consensus, nor to clear measures of economic policy. As a result of the pressure from a national Equal Pay Campaign and mirroring the Cabinet’s hesitations, a Royal Commission on Equal Pay was settled in October 1944 to examine the equal pay claim for the Civil Service. Dennis Robertson acts as a shadow chairman for the Royal Commission that assembled an enormous amount of evidences, testimonies and reports from all over the countries, many professional organisations, experts, and academics. Nine memoranda from recognized economists of the time – among them Roy F. Harrod, John R. Hicks, Arthur C. Pigou, Joan Robinson, Philip Sargent Florence, and Hamilton Whyte – developed central (but not) original arguments in favour and against the principle of “equal pay”. The debates within the Commission were hectic and harsh and the final Report was followed by two notes of dissent. Focusing on the theoretical discussions between economists on women’s wages, the paper first analyses the origins and context – both political sphere and in academic economics-- of the report (section1), before presenting the arguments of the economists (section 2). The last section analyses the reasons of the dissent and the crucial role play by “naturalist” arguments from both sides – the “progressive” one, with the dissent backed by the medical arguments from Janet Vaughan; and the “conservative” one, based on the “population” problem which the formulation by Harrod and Henderson, both Royal Commission on Equal and on Population members, had the greatest impact of all the economists arguments (section 3).
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