The Columbus dispatch. (Columbus, Miss.) 19??-1922, 1922-02-08
EQUAL PAY FOR
MEN AND WOMEN
Mrs. jamie Turner Saunders
Takes Stand For Justice In
Paying Instructors.

In a statement in regard to lower
pay of women instructors in Missis-
sippi colleges, Mrs. B. f. Saunders,
/ president of the Mississippi League
of Women Voters, says:
"The principle of equal pay for
equal work is so clearly a matter of
justice that one would expect to find
it an established practice in every
enlightened community. Especially
would one expect to find it an estab-
lished custom in the college world.
But the truth is that it is here that
one finds perhaps the greatest differ
ence between the salaries paid men
and the salaries paid women. Our
colleges in Mississippi afford strik-
ing illustration, man teacher at the
University or the A. & M. College
being paid $l100 more per year than
woman teacher at the M. S. G. w.
doing the same grade of work.
"Why is there such a difference?
1t is not because the woman teacher
is less efficient or less highly train
ed. The graduates of the M. S. c.
w. who have taken postgraduate
work in the eastern colleges have
proved beyond question the high
quality of the teaching in our wom-
ans college 1t is not because men
have families to support and women
have not. Men teachers are not paid
upon that basis, the unmarried pro-
fessors in our mems colleges receiv-
ing as much compensation as the mar
ried. Besides, a very large proper
ton of women teachers have family
obligations. And it is not because
woman teacher does not deserve as
much remuneration as the man teach
er. No fair person could hold such |
an idea.
"The only explanation of the diff
ference is custom-bad custom. We
have always paid women teachers
less than men of the same qualifica-
lions. We have done this without
thinking whether it was right or
wrong, wise or unwise. But it has
now become conviction with US that
equalization in pay of men and wom-
en- employees in every industry and
profession is a matter of justice and
eXpediency.
Several of the Woman's organiza-
tions in the state have endorsed the
principle of equal pay for equal work,
and have pledged their support to
a movement to secure for the women
teachers at the M. S. c. w. salaries
equal to those paid the professors at
the mems colleges. The time has now
come for these organizations to make
known their strong advocacy of the
movement, and to bespeak for it inn
partial delberation by the legislature.
sex should rot enter into the
question Of equal pay for equal work
By men and women alike, it should
be weighed on its merits as a matter
of abstract justice The most ardent
advocate of the principle would
greatly deplore an equalization of
salaries by a downward revision of
mems pay The woman's organiza-
tions ask for justice for the women
teachers Mt the M. S. c. W. They
desire no injustice to the men teach
ers at the same institution. Lower
ing the salaries of the four men
teachers at the State College for
Women is no solution of the prob
lem. 1t is merely an evasion of the
issue. In the eyes Of unprecedented
persons, such a course would only be
an additional discrimination against .
the NJ s. c. w. 1t would not right
the existing wrong"