Freedom to compete isn't enhanced by government action, it hurts it.
The phrase “equal pay for equal work” is in play again, with an intended meaning we all know. The idea is that government should force (really force, this time) private employers to boost the pay of women to match the rate of men in the same positions.
Almost every state had laws that specifically limited when women could work.It’s a bad idea; more than that, the policy actually betrays the original meaning of the phrase, circa 1920; more about this in a bit.
Such a law, heavily enforced (after all, equal pay has been the law for half a century), would actually handicap women in the marketplace, taking away their ability to price compete. It would require an army of bureaucrats to enforce by overriding business control over wages and salaries. And because you can comply by either raising wages or by lowering the professional status of women, it would install a new glass ceiling for women, outpricing their labor in the market for professional advancement.
There is a mighty social cost too. It would do very cruel things to the reputation of all women of accomplishment. It would signal to the world that they only achieved through government power, the use of which is much like putting a gun to people’s heads. Anyone can do that. Nothing to brag about, nothing to feel proud about, nothing for which to take credit.
The market is achieving the goal in any case.
Misogyny and the Law
Maybe you detect a patronizing hint to the demand. It’s as if women can’t really cut it in the professional workforce. They can’t manage their own careers or make their own deals. They can’t cut it. They need the help of the state.
There’s more than a hint of misogyny here. And indeed, if you look at the history of labor legislation as it pertains to women, that is exactly what you find.
Feminists in those days were savvy: they saw exactly what was going on.In the early part of the 20th century, restrictions on women’s work and the regulatory imposition of lower wages were put in place for eugenic reasons. The life goal of women is not to make money but to further the race. Their place is not in the factory but in the home bearing and raising children. Hence, regulations should punish their commercial ambitions.
Feminists in those days were savvy: they saw exactly what was going on. They used the phrase “equal pay for equal work” to call for an end to these regulatory restrictions on women’s work. It was a clarion call not for government but to allow the market to work! It was: let the market be permitted to pay women equal to man, because the law wouldn’t allow it.
What kinds of laws? Almost every state had laws that specifically limited when women could work: not before 6am and not after 10pm. And there were maximum working hours too: not more than 50. (That might sound like more than a full-time job, but 100 years ago, this workload was seen as less than serious.)
Such laws were typical. Also, states and even the federal government offered payments to mothers not to work. It was the earliest form of what we call the welfare state, and the motivation was, again, certainly eugenic. How can the best women breed the best offspring if they are hanging around the factories instead of using their reproductive talents to lift the quality of the human population?
At the time, the women’s movement was dedicated to repealing this law. As the New York Times reported on January 18, 1920, women “have begun a determined fight to prevent the passage by the New York State Legislature of three new labor measures and for the repeal of two laws limiting hours of employment.”
