On This Day, 19 March 1918

Birmingham Daily Gazette

Tuesday 19 March 1918

EQUAL PAY.

WOMEN TEACHERS DEMAND SAME TREATMENT AS MEN.

A meeting convened by the National Federation of Woman Teachers at the Temperance Hall, Birmingham, last night, protested against the proposed legalisation of different standards of pay for men and women teachers.

Mrs. Mary Gilson, President of the Birmingham Branch of the National Union of Women Workers, said the larger salary was only given to man by virtue of his manhood and the lesser salary to the woman only by virtue of her womanhood. What they claimed was equal pay for equal work coupled with endowment of motherhood.

Miss Byett, vice-president of the National Federation of Women Teachers, said the chief reason given for unequal pay was that the women accepted a lower scale. That was an immoral argument: it was argument used every employer of sweated labour in the country, and Education Committees were employers who sweated their women teachers mercilessly.