Minimum Wages for Women in the U.S.

In the U.S., the stubborn consensus that men needed higher wages in order to support their families was tempered somewhat by widespread agreement that the labor market did not function effectively where women and the family were concerned.

Virtually all participants in the debate cited a growing number of budget studies conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). A vast collection of survey data supported the claim that women’s earnings were a necessary component of working class family incomes. Women work for wages, the reports emphasized, because they must. The tone implied that no motive beyond sheer necessity could justify female wage employment.³⁸ The survey data was also used to support the claim that men needed higher wages. Conforming to the precept that non-market work was unproductive, the BLS surveys focused on market income alone. Several independent researchers, however, including those associated with Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago, sought to establish that households with no full-time homemaker required more market income to purchase substi­tutes for home-provided services.³⁹

Another, more subtle issue concerned the costs of what economist Frank Taussig called ‘‘expense-reducing cooperation”.

services are just as real a part of the necessary cost of living in a family as are the food she markets and cooks and the clothes she launders. If the working daughter, therefore, is to share evenly in the necessary household expenses, she must bear her share of the mother's costs just as much as her share of the rent or of the fuel bill.⁴1

Douglas was reluctant to suggest that women should earn enough to help support other dependents, but others advanced the argument that women as well as men deserved a family wage. Mary Van Kleeck, head of a govern­ment agency that would shortly become the Women's Bureau, argued that men and women worked together to support dependent children, and older daughters were just as responsible as older sons for contributions to this end. A fierce advocate of equal pay for equal work, Van Kleeck opposed efforts to set a female minimum wage at a level lower than the minimum wage for men. Sophonisba Breckinridge of the University of Chicago School of Social Work also called attention to women's need for higher earnings. Marshal­ling data from the decennial censuses as well as the Bureau of Labor Statistics budget surveys, she documented the number of married women contributing income to their families, concluding that, ‘‘no safe line can be drawn between the sexes on the basis of the support of dependents.''⁴²

Economist Paul Douglas, best known to economists for his contribution to the eponymous Cobb-Douglas production function, argued that wage earners should be paid on the basis of work performed, not family size, noting that it was impossible to determine whether they actually contrib­uted their wages to family support. Douglas and his wife, Dorothy Wolff Douglas (referred to above) were both impressed by Eleanor Rathbone's arguments. A family allowance system would make it reasonable to stipulate an equal minimum wage for men and women without penalizing those with large numbers of children to support. Douglas published a book on the subject, entitled Wages and the Family, but was soon distracted by a distinguished career as a U.S. Senator.⁴³ Few other academic economists favored family allowances, even as they were widely adopted in many European countries.⁴⁴