Introduction: Work, Theory, Scholarship—Equal Pay, Pay Equity, and the Sex of Gendered Work

Women’s struggle for identity, status and rights is waged in a world dominated by patriarchal principle and practice. The perennial campaign for equal pay predates the industrialisation of factory work, department stores and offices. Yet it faces constancy and consistency in male wages and male jobs, management structures, bureaucracy and corporate power being seen as central to the GDP and economic health of nations. It is against that backdrop that decisions are made as to who-is-paid-what, what-work-is-worth, and who does ‘real’ work worthy of real reward. Women may and do labour equally hard (or more so), in equally onerous conditions (or worse), for as tough (or tougher) bosses under as oppressive (or steamy, sticky and stifling) conditions. But never are the jobs they do recognised as equal in effort, intellect, and stamina as those done by men. Never are their wages equal. Wages and salaries, like jobs and vocations, are gendered. Endemic masculinity dictates employer and industrial tribunal decision-making, forever privileging male take-home pay and demoting women’s work—simply because women do it. Sometimes, women historians and theorists fall into the hegemonic trap. And even where women’s work is validated, paternalistic notions downplay equality in a belief that women’s preference is not to compete in men’s world. Nonetheless women speak up, speak out, write herstory into factual fiction, campaign politically and enter the industrial arena seeking, nay straining, to put matters right.