The Gender Gap in Earnings during World War II: New Evidence

The Gender Gap in Earnings during World War II: New EvidenceAuthor(s): Mark AldrichSource: Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Apr., 1989), pp. 415-429Published by: Cornell University, School of Industrial & Labor RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2523398 .

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THE GENDER GAP IN EARNINGS DURING WORLD WAR II: NEW EVIDENCE

MARK ALDRICH*

Contrary to the widely held belief that women's earnings rose relative to men's during World War II because of women's unprecedented movement into heavy manufacturing industries, the author of this study finds that the national all-industry earnings of women during the war fell compared to those of men. In Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New York, the relative weekly and annual earnings of female manufacturing workers rose, but at a rate below that of the long-term trend. Overall, the decline in women's weekly and annual earnings compared to men's probably resulted from the relative increase in men's hours worked-a result of state protective legislation that limited women's hours of work.

SCHOLARS do not entirely agree about whether women's position in the labor

market, relative to men's, improved or worsened during World War II. The majority concur with the International Labor Office's finding, reported in the immediate postwar period, that "women's wages increased . . . relatively to men's wages." The ILO hastened to add, however, that "this trend existed already before the war"-a cautionary note ignored by most later writers (ILO 1946: 206). Thus, William Chafe (1972:135) asserted that during the war women's ''wages leaped upward"; Mary Schweitzer (1980:89), that they "rose swiftly"; Susan Hartmann (1982:2 1), that women's "wages in industry increased both absolutely and in relation to men's"; and Karen Anderson (1981:6), that "the disparities between men's and women's average earnings

* The author is Professor of Economics at Smith College.

The computer package used for all calculations in this study was SPSSX. Data not presented herein are available on request to the author, at the Department of Economics, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063.

narrowed somewhat during the war years." In opposition to this position is that of Alice Kessler-Harris. Although Kessler- Harris views the period as resulting in "real gains" for women, she also asserts that "the gap between men's and women's wages increased during the war" (Kessler- Harris 1982:278).'

All of these claims are based on exceed- ingly fragmentary evidence. In this study, I assess the available evidence and present some previously unexploited data that provide a more complete picture of the earnings and interindustry distribution of various groups of women workers during the war than has previously been possible.

1 Kessler-Harris cited Brady (1952), whose data are for 1939 and 1950. Brady (1947) also referred to, but did not cite, a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey done in 1944 that indicated a decline in women's relative earnings during the war. A search of both published BLS materials and Record Group 257 at the National Archives failed to turn up the source of Brady's figures. Few of these authors stated explicitly that the war caused the change in women's earnings, and not all were clear as to whether they meant relative or absolute earnings. Nor did they usually distinguish hourly, weekly, and annual pay. It seems clear from the context, however, that relative earnings were implied and causation was assumed.

Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 42, No. 3 (April 1989). ( by Cornell University. 0019-7939/89/4203 $01.00

415



416 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS REVIEW

Table 1. Relative Annual Earnings of Female Workers in the United States, 1939-1945.

Year

Source 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945

Social Security .58 .56 .54 .50 .50 .52 .53 Census .59 - - - - .44 .50 BLS - - .84 - - .70 -

Sources: The Social Security data are median annual earnings of all four-quarter workers covered by Social Security and are from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (1950). The Census data are median annual wage and salary earnings for all individuals over 14 with such earnings, and are from U.S. Bureau of the Census (1948, Table 22, and 1949, Table 21). The BLS data are the median annual money income of single men and women and are from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (1946:177).

These results strongly suggest that although hourly wages and weekly earnings for at least some groups of women did ad- vance in comparison to men's, overall, as Kessler-Harris claims, the relative weekly and annual earnings of women probably fell during the war years-at least as measured against their long-term upward trend. In addition, some of these data allow an assessment of the comparative importance of wage or earnings changes within industries, compared to shifts in workers' interindustry distribution, in ac- counting for whatever "real" gains or losses women workers may have experienced.

Relative Annual Earnings of Women Production Workers: National Data

The only consistent information on annual earnings for a representative group of workers nationwide is derived from Social Security data. Earnings ratios based on these data are presented in Table 1.2 Because these data are for covered, four-quarter workers only, they exclude many part-time employees as well as the self-employed. Four- quarter workers accounted for between 58 and 60 percent of the employed non-

2 These data should be used cautiously. As noted in the text, the Social Security figures exclude (for example) domestics and the self-employed. Thus, they show that about 38 percent of all workers were in manufacturing in 1939, whereas Census figures show that 24 percent of non-agricultural workers were so employed. Moreover, since domestic workers were relatively low-paid, and since the proportion of women working at such jobs presumably fell during the war, women's earnings may be biased downward. Still, the consistency of these data with the Census and BLS figures suggests that the decline they show was real.

agricultural labor force during most of the war years, however, and since earnings ratios for covered workers with less than four- quarter coverage exhibit an even more pro- nounced erosion of women's relative earnings during this period, they are not presented. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and Census data provide some supporting evidence for a larger fraction of the labor force (also presented in Table 1).

Clearly, these data do not support the contention that World War II raised women's relative earnings. The Social Secu- rity figures appear to have been first employed by Woytinsky (1953),3 but, along with the Census and BLS data, they have been all but ignored by later writers con- centrating on the war years. Most writers who believe that the war raised women's relative pay have focused instead on the "spectacular gains" (Hartmann 1982:2 1) of women in factory employment, or more generally on the gains of female blue-collar workers-that is, on "Rosie the Riveter." I analyze some of this information below to see whether or not it can support the "great leap upward" theory.

The Impact of the War on the Industry Distribution of Women Workers

It is indeed true that women made major inroads into some kinds of factory work that had previously been the preserve of

3 Woytinsky's (1953:452) interpretation of these data is somewhat puzzling. He notes that "the ratio of median earnings of all male workers to those of all female workers increased during the war," but wrongly claims that "no such changes can be discerned in the four-quarters group."



WOMEN'S RELATIVE EARNINGS DURING WORLD WAR II 417

Table 2. Changes in the Industrial Distribution of Male and Female Workers, 1940-1945.

Year

Description 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945

Relative Share of Women in Mfg., U.S. Totala .690 - - - .868 - Segregation Indicesb U.S. Total, 20 Mfg. Industry Groups 47.20 48.47 41.75 31.55 29.33 32.82 New York State:

15 Mfg. Industry Groups - - 39.87 25.55 25.39 -

65 Mfg. Industry Groups - - 46.24 30.06 30.62 -

Illinois: 12 Mfg. Industry Groups 42.25 35.70 39.03 26.58 19.77 21.68 50 Mfg. Industry Groups 50.69 41.74 51.24 46.11 38.68 35.59

Pennsylvania: 10 Mfg. Industry Groups 55.25 56.07 50.86 38.98 36.19 39.41 a The percentage of non-agricultural female employment in manufacturing, relative to the percentage of

non-agricultural male employment in manufacturing. b The New York and Illinois data are for June of each year; the Pennsylvania data are annual averages; the

B.L.S. data covering 1940-42 are for October; and the BLS data for 1943-45 are annual averages. Duncan indices are I = X(%Mi - %Fi)12, where Mi and Fi are, respectively, the percentage of male and female

manufacturing workers in the ith manufacturing industry. Clearly, if Mi and Fi were always equal, the index would be zero, indicating no segregation. Complete segregation would imply there were no women in "male" industries and no men in "female" industries, and the index in that case would equal 100.

Sources: Row one for 1940 calculated from data in U.S. Bureau of the Census (1943, Table 1); for 1944, see Appendix. New York data are calculated from data provided by the New York Department of Labor (1940-45); Illinois data are from the Illinois Department of Labor (1940-45); Pennsylvania data are from the Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs (1916-50). Data for the United States are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (1945a, 1947), and are presented in the Appendix.

male workers. During the early years of the war, relatively more men than women shifted into manufacturing (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1942a:5; 1943), but wartime labor shortages soon reversed this trend. Census and BLS data on the percentage of all female non-agricultural workers who worked in manufacturing relative to the percentage of men in manufacturing (Table 2, row 1) demonstrate that from 1940 to 1944 relatively more women than men shifted into manufacturing.

Within manufacturing, changes in the distribution of male and female workers can be measured using Duncan indices of interindustry segregation (see Table 2). These indices are derived from BLS data for 20 manufacturing industries for each year from 1940 to 1945. Similar indices were computed from manufacturing employment data published by the states of Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania.4

4 New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois were the three largest industrial states in 1939. They were also the

Because they are at different levels of

only states that published usable information about women's employment and wages during the war (U.S. Women's Bureau 1944). The New York data include employment and weekly earnings by gender for a 50 percent sample of manufacturing wage earners, and are available in the aggregate from 1939 to 1944 but were disaggregated into 12 industry groups and 65 roughly three-digit industries (for example, Meat Prod- ucts) only from 1942 on. Pennsylvania published annual employment and earnings for all male and female wage earners in 10 manufacturing industry groups plus mining from 1916 to 1950. The data in the text do not include mining.

Illinois published data on total employment of manufacturing production workers in 12 industry groups and 50 industries. The data were based on a sample averaging roughly two-thirds of all manufacturing production workers, who were defined as "skilled and unskilled piece and time workers in production and other departments such as mainte- nance, shipping, warehousing, powerplant, as well as working foremen, and gang and strawbosses whose work is primarily non-supervisory" (Illinois Depart- ment of Labor 1941:10). Thus, white-collar and supervisory workers were excluded. Male and female employment by industry group and industry was estimated from the Illinois data using methods described in the Appendix.




aggregation and because they focus sharply on three important industrial states, they provide an important supple- ment to the BLS findings.

As can be seen, the Duncan indices are in broad agreement, although the national and Pennsylvania data indicate that segregation rose during 1940-41 and 1944-45, whereas the Illinois figures indicate an increase in 1941-42, and split on the issue of whether segregation rose after 1944. The rise in segregation in the early war years, although surprising, seems to be real (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1942a, 1943). As late as April 1943, New York's Department of Labor (1943:159) was reporting that "women in New York state will not be turn- ing the wheels of industry in war production to any great extent in the near future," and predicted that of 91,000 workers soon to be hired in the defense industry, only 18,000 of them would be women. Along with the relative shift of men into manufacturing, such increased segregation probably accounts for the erosion of women's pay relative to men's during the early war years (Table 1).

Of course, the prediction that women would not soon be staffing the defense industries could not have been more wrong. The Duncan indices show a decline of roughly 30 to 40 percent in interindustry gender segregation in manufacturing over the entire wartime period. Even in traditionally male industry groups such as transportation equipment, the share of jobs held by women rose from less than 1 percent in 1939 to 22 percent at the peak of wartime production during 1944 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1947). Thus, Table 1 confirms what more impressionistic evidence also suggests: that the war eventually opened up many manufacturing industries to blue-collar women workers.

Relative Weekly and Hourly Earnings of Female Production Workers

Nationwide data on the relative weekly and hourly earnings of female production workers in 25 manufacturing industries were compiled by the National Industrial

Conference Board for 1914 and for 1920-48. They have been cited by several writers as evidence that the war improved women's relative earnings (ILO 1946: 206-12; Chafe 1972:158; Anderson 1981: 7; Hartmann 1982:21; Campbell 1984: 136-37). In fact, these data are highly suspect. They are aggregated based on fixed 1923 employment weights, which, by 1940, must have borne little relationship to reality (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1975:154; Silverman 1985). But even if that problem is ignored, these data, if properly interpreted, do not support the proposition that war improved women's relative pay.

Earnings ratios for the war years derived from these data are contained in Table 3. Taken out of historical context, they do indeed seem to show relative improvement for women. As the ILO noted, however, there had been a long- term upward trend in the relative pay of female factory workers (Aldrich and Bu- chele 1986; Goldin 1984; Phillips 1982). Thus, the relevant measure is the impact of the war on women's relative earnings compared to their longer-term trend. The results of regression analysis based on the Conference Board data that estimated both the trend in relative earnings and the impact of war are also shown in Table 3. Given that these findings reflect 1923 employment weights, they should be interpreted cautiously. To the extent that they can be trusted, however, they clearly indicate that World War II retarded the growth in the relative earnings of women.5

Apparently no better national data than these exist on relative female earnings by industry or occupation for the war years.6

5 It might be supposed that the relevant wartime period is 1942-45, since the war did not begin until December 1941. In fact, the economic effects of the defense buildup were strongly evident in 1941; defense spending rose from $2.2 billion in 1940 to $13.7 billion in 1941 to $49.4 billion in 1942. Defining the war years as 1942-45 results in slightly smaller but still negative coefficients; in the relative wage equation it is significant only at the 10 percent level, but in the weekly earnings equation it is significant at the 1 percent level.

6 Social Security data on employment and mean earnings by industry are available for some of the




Table 3. Relative Earnings of Female Production Workers in 25 Manufacturing Industries, 1940-45, and the Long-Term Trend in Relative Earnings: Conference Board Data.

A. Earnings Ratios Year 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945

Weekly Earnings .57 .56 .55 .57 .57 .60 Hourly Earnings .63 .62 .62 .63 .65 .66

B. Impact of World War II a Dep. Var. Constant Trend War R2

Relative Hrly. Earnings .62 .002 -.04 .23 (2.73) (2.71)

Relative Wkly. Earnings .56 .003 -.07 .40 (3.83) (4.20)

a The period covered is 1914 and 1920-48. The impact of war is measured by a dummy variable with a value of one for 1941-45 and zero for all other years. When the regressions are run with 1914 dropped, the impact of war remains negative and statistically significant in both equations. Figures in parentheses are t-ratios.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census (1975: Series D 833-838). The data are also presented in the Appendix.

On the other hand, Illinois published data on weekly and hourly earnings and hours worked for male and female production and related workers for the period 1924-48, Pennsylvania published annual earnings of manufacturing production workers for the period 1916-50, and New York published weekly earnings data for manufacturing workers for several of the war years. Table 4 presents relative weekly earnings for female production workers in New York manufacturing for 1940-44, and relative annual earnings for female wage earners in Pennsylvania manufacturing for 1940-45.7 It also presents relative weekly earnings in Illinois manufacturing, non-manufacturing, and both sectors combined during June for various years from 1940 to 1945. (The procedures employed in aggregating the Illinois data are described in the appendix.)

As the numbers make clear, women's relative weekly and annual earnings in

war years, but are not usable because they exclude earnings over $3,000.

7 Michigan conducted two surveys to gather data on the employment and earnings of men and women in manufacturing during 1942 and 1944, but the 1944 survey so oversampled durable goods production as to be of little use. For non-durables, durables, and the two combined, the 1944 survey reported average hourly earnings for women of $.751, $1.141, and $1.101, respectively (Michigan Department of Labor 1944:4). These figures imply that only 11 percent of all female manufacturing workers worked in non-durable goods production, which is simply not believable.

manufacturing stagnated through 1942, rose sharply thereafter, and in 1944-45 were 5 to 10 percent higher than their 1940 level. Regression analysis again indicates, however, that war reduced earnings relative to the long-term trend.8 The picture is even less cheery for non- manufacturing employees in Illinois, as these women's relative weekly earnings fell about 18 percent in the war years. Because data for non-manufacturing industries in Illinois are unavailable for most of the prewar period, however, it is not possible to compare these results to trends.

The decline in relative earnings of all female workers in Illinois from 1940 to 1944 reflects the fact that most of them were employed outside of manufacturing. This decline is consistent with the Social Security, Census, and BLS national estimates presented in Table 1. It appears that women's relative earnings in manufacturing rose during the war years, but by less than their long-term trend, while relative earnings for all women workers probably fell.

It is not clear from the above statistics what role the relative employment shift of

8 The equations for Illinois and Pennsylvania were also estimated with the war years defined as 1942-45. For Illinois the coefficient remains negative but is smaller and even less significant than before. Similarly, for Pennsylvania the coefficient remains negative but is smaller and significant only at the 10 percent level.




Table 4. Relative Earnings of Female Production Workers: New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, 1940-1945.

A. Earnings Ratios Year 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945

New York: Mfg. .56 .54 .51 .58 .59 -

Pennsylvania: Mfg. .48 .46 .44 .49 .51 .53

Illinozs:a Mfg. .56 .54 .54 .57 .60 .62 Non-Mfg. .50 .46 .43 .47 .44 .41 All Workers .51 - - - .48 - Ratio with 1940 Emp.

Weights (N = 2) .51 - - - .47

B. Impact of World War It Dep. Var. Constant Trend War R2

Relative Wkly. Earnings (Illinois) .56 .003 -.03 .22

(2.92) (1.78) Relative Annual Earnings .45 .003 -.05 .35 (Pennsylvania) (3.89) (2.32)

a Illinois data are for June, since annual averages for non-manufacturing workers are unavailable. New York data are annual averages for 1940 and 1941 and for June of subsequent years.

b Data are annual averages for manufacturing workers from 1924 to 1948 in Illinois and from 1916 to 1950 in Pennsylvania; the impact of war is measured by a dummy with a value of one for 1941-45 and zero for all other years. Figures in parentheses are t-ratios.

Sources: New York Department of Labor (1940-45), Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs (1916-50), Illinois Department of Labor (1940-48), and computations based on the data from those sources.

women into manufacturing may have had in offsetting the apparent pay erosion in the non-manufacturing sector. This effect can be isolated if we compute a hypothet- ical wage series based on actual weekly earnings of men and women in each sector but weighted by constant, 1940 sectoral shares of male and female employment.

Female to male earnings ratios computed in this manner are presented for 1940 and 1944 in the last row of Table 4, panel A. (Employment weights are unavailable for other years.) They reveal that if female employment had not shifted into manufacturing, the decline in women's average pay in Illinois would have been only one point greater. This surprisingly modest impact reflects the small relative shift of women into manufacturing in Illinois compared to the shift that oc- curred nationwide. When national employment weights are applied to the earnings data in Table 4 we find that between 1940 and 1944 women's weekly

earnings declined from 51 to 49 percent of men's earnings. When the data are weighted by constant 1940 sectoral shares of male and female employment, however, the ratio falls to 46 percent. Thus, it appears that nationwide, the greater shift of women than of men into manufacturing probably did play a major role in offsetting the decline in women's relative weekly pay.9

The movement into manufacturing raised women's relative pay because for many women it meant a shift from very low-paying service or retail jobs into high-wage durable goods production. Sur- veys by the U.S. Women's Bureau

9 The national weights employed are those used to construct row 1 of Table 2 and are the share of non-agricultural employment in manufacturing, whereas the Illinois data are the share of non- agricultural employees in manufacturing. The proce- dure in the text should be taken as illustrative only, for it assumes that wages in Illinois were similar to wages nationwide.




(1946c:37) conducted in 1944-45 showed that of every 100 women employed in eating and drinking places before Pearl Harbor and still working during the survey period, 30 of them had moved into war manufacturing. One such woman was "B.A." She had "worked for 20 cents per hour as a waitress where she was not permitted to accept tips. Her rate at the bomber plant [Willow Run], $1.15, was more than five times her prewar rate of pay" (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1945c: 1086).

Hourly earnings over the period 1940-45 for manufacturing workers, and from 1942 on for workers in the non- manufacturing sector, were collected by the state of Illinois, and are presented in Table 5. A surprising pattern shown by these data is the sharp rise in women's relative hourly pay (especially in manufacturing) at a time when their human capital must have been falling in comparison to that of men. Because the draft took young, inexperienced men, and because relative female labor force participation rates rose, women's relative experience must have declined during the war years. In addition, women, more than men, moved into manufacturing from non- manufacturing, and, within manufacturing, into new industries, so their firm- and industry-specific experience must also have declined compared to men's.

This rise in women's relative hourly pay

suggests that the erosion of their weekly and annual earnings (Tables 1 and 4) cannot be explained by declines in human capital. Rather, as Table 5 suggests, the decline in women's relative weekly earnings must have resulted largely from the fall in their relative hours worked. This decline was sharpest in the non- manufacturing sector, at least from 1942 on. Thus, the greater shift of women than of men into manufacturing helped offset some of the decline in their weekly earnings, since their hours worked in manufacturing probably fell less there compared to men.

The decline in relative hours worked affected women's earnings not only because it reduced the number of hours for which they received compensation, but also because it diminished overtime pay, thereby lowering average hourly compensation. BLS adjustment factors (U.S. Bu- reau of Labor Statistics 1942b) can be used to estimate what women's relative earnings would have been had women worked the same hours as men in 1942 and 1944 (Table 6). The estimates suggest that relative hourly earnings for all women workers would have been about 4 percentage points higher in 1944 if they had worked as many hours as men. Moreover, their relative weekly earnings would have risen instead of declining, and would have been about 12 points higher than they actually were in 1944.

Table 5. Relative Hourly Earnings and Hours Worked of Female Production Workers in Illinois, 1940-1945.a

Year

Description 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945

Manufacturing: Wages .62 .61 .62 .66 .69 .72 Hrs. Wkd. .90 .90 .88 .87 .87 .87

Non-Manufacturing: Wages - - .47 .51 .51 .55 Hrs. Wkd. - - .90 1.01 .84 .84

All Workers:b Wages - - .52 - .56 -

a All data are for June. Weekly earnings, hourly earnings, and hours worked are derived from separate samples and are therefore not always mutually consistent.

b For the 1942 weight an interpolation between 1940 and 1944 was used. Source: Illinois Department of Labor (1940-45), and computations based on data therein.




Table 6. Relative Earnings of Women Production Workers in Illinois If They Had

Worked the Same Hours as Men, 1942-1944.a

Year

Description 1942 1944

Manufacturing Earnings Ratio .64 .73 Non-Manufacturing Earnings Ratio .47 .51 Aggregate Earnings Ratio .53 .60

a Since hours worked are assumed to be identical for men and women, hourly and weekly compensation ratios are identical.

Source: Women's earnings computed using men's hours worked and women's hourly earnings adjusted for the implied amount of overtime using procedures described in U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (1942b). For men, actual hours and earnings were employed.

In Illinois, women's hours of work fell in comparison to those of men, at least partly because they were constrained by the state's Eight Hour Law. Originally passed in 1893, that law prohibited women from working more than 8 hours a day and 48 hours a week. Like most other states, Illinois granted wartime exceptions to its protective legislation, but special written requests were required. As late as March 1942, only 70 establishments emL ploying 2,079 women had been granted exceptions (Illinois Department of labor 1942a:18; 1942b:1O-12; 1942c:8; 1942d: 12; 1945). Long hours were common not only in such war goods manufacturing industries as machinery and machine tools, cutlery, hardware, and transportation equipment, but also in such non- manufacturing industries as hotels and laundries (Illinois Department of Labor 1942a).

Nor was Illinois the only major industrial state to hobble its women workers with such a law. The first state to pass an enforceable law limiting women's hours of labor was Massachusetts, in 1879. By the 1940s, 44 states and Washington, D.C., had some form of law regulating women's daily or weekly hours of work (U.S. Women's Bureau 1945, 1946b). Some, such as New York and California, were more liberal than Illinois in granting

exceptions to 48-hour work week laws, but even in those states women were rarely allowed to work more than 54 hours.10 As a result, women were less able than men to take advantage of the war-time production boom by earning overtime premiums. The extent of that disadvantage is suggested by the example of Michigan at the peak of wartime production:

In 1943 and 1944, ... there were many weeks when the hours actually worked exceeded 60 for most men. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1945c: 1087) In all industries men's hours were longer than those of women. Women's hours are restricted by the state law which limits them to 54 per week. The difference in the average workweek of men and women contributes substantially to the [wage gap]. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1945b)

These findings suggest that a good part of the national decline in women's relative annual earnings (indicated in Table 1) probably resulted from a decrease in the length of their work week relative to that of men. Ironically, then, legislation en- acted to shield one generation of female workers from the harsher workings of the market hindered the next generation in reaping the market's full benefits.

10 For evidence on other states' treatment of their protective legislation during this period, see U.S. Women's Bureau (1945).

Although New York never published representative data on men's and women's hours worked, it did conduct several surveys. That men generally worked longer hours than women is indicated in New York Department of Labor (1944). Whether their hours increased more than those of women is not clear, but few women were allowed to work more than 54 hours a week (New York Department of Labor 1945:19). In New York, women also had absenteeism rates that were nearly 80 percent above those of men during 1942 and 1943 (New York Department of Labor 1943), but since men's and women's relative rates of absenteeism remained unchanged, absenteeism could not have affected comparative weekly wages.

Pennsylvania relaxed its law to allow women to work 10 hours a day during the war, but still limited their weekly hours to no more than 48 (U.S. Women's Bureau 1945:76). Michigan data reveal a small decline in relative hours worked for female manufacturing workers from 1942 to 1944 (Mich- igan Department of Labor 1943:9; 1944:4).




Table 7. Constant Employment Weight Relative Earnings for Female Production Workers: Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania, 1940-45.

Year

Description 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945

Illinoisa Actual Wkly. Earnings .56 .54 .54 .57 .60 .62 Wkly. Earnings with 1940 Emp. Weights

Industry Groups (N = 12) .56 .54 .53 .54 .55 .55 Industries (N = 50) .56 .54 .54 .55 .56 .51

New Yorka Actual Wkly. Earnings .56 .54 .51 .58 .59 -

Wkly. Earnings with 1942 Emp. Weights

Industry Groups (N = 15) - - .51 .58 .57 Industries (N = 65) - - .51 .54 .56 -

Pennsylvania Actual Annual Earnings .48 .46 .44 .49 .51 .53 Annual Earnings with 1940 Emp. Weights

Industry Groups (N = 10) .48 .48 .45 .48 .49 .51 a All data are for June. Sources: Illinois Department of Labor (1940-45), New York Department of Labor (1940-45), Pennsylvania

Department of Internal Affairs (1916-50), and computations based on data in those sources.

The Decline of Industry Segregation and Women's Relative

Pay in Manufacturing

Most of the writers who believe that World War II improved women's relative earnings stress the unprecedented job opportunities in heavy manufacturing that the war provided (Chafe 1972:135-41; Campbell 1984:114-16; Hartmann 1982: 21; Anderson 1981:4-8). Hence, a perti- nent question is what impact the decline in interindustry segregation within manufacturing (confirmed by Table 2) had on women's relative earnings. Table 7 repeats the relative weekly and annual earnings data from Table 4. It also presents constant employment weight wages for several levels of aggregation.

Remarkably, these data indicate that in Illinois all of the increase in women's relative weekly earnings within manufacturing can be accounted for by shifts in employment among industry groups after 1942. Even in Pennsylvania, despite the broad industrial categories used by that state, the data indicate that half of the rise in wo-

men's relative pay resulted from employment shifts. In both states, the constant employment weight earnings ratios track the actual data quite closely through 1942, and then diverge sharply. This pattern suggests that the reallocation of women to war work did not become important until about 1943, a speculation that is given some support by the increase in gender segregation in manufacturing during the early years of the war shown in Table 2 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1942b).

For individual workers, whether male or female, the movement into war production from other manufacturing industries resulted in sharp wage increases, though less spectacular than those gained by shifting from service to manufacturing jobs-as the example of Mrs. S. A. suggests: I I

1 The modern efficiency wage literature has recently begun to stress the importance of industry wage premiums in determining relative earnings (Katz 1986; Krueger and Summers 1986). The finding here that the movement into manufacturing and interindustry shifts within manufacturing dur-




Mrs. S. A.... worked as a porter [for one month in 1941]. She then became a braider for a cable and wire company. The change in jobs raised her rate from 40 to 73 cents an hour. She worked 7 months as a braider, then had 6 months of unemployment after which she returned to her last job at the same rate. After 3 months she moved on to Willow Run.... Her entrance rate at the bomber plant was 85 cents, which was automatically raised to $1.15. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1945c)

Thus, the familiar account of World War II that stresses the opening up of new manufacturing jobs fits the Illinois and Pennsylvania experience quite well. A sharply different picture emerges for New York, however, where a third or less of women's relative wage gains resulted from interindustry employment changes. The proximate cause of this divergent experience is clear enough: in New York the relative pay of women in such traditionally female industries as textiles, food, and leather kept pace with the durable goods sector, whereas in Illinois and Pennsylva- nia women's relative pay in those industries fell behind. The explanation for that fact may, in turn, lie in the pattern of hours worked. In Illinois, hours worked by men increased much more relative to those worked by women in these tradi- tional industries than in manufacturing overall, and, as a result, men's relative weekly pay increased. The exception proves the rule: in apparel, a traditionally female industry in which women's hours kept pace with men's, women's relative pay increased.

Conclusion

The findings of this study, based though they are on fragmentary data, cast doubt on the view that World War II advanced women's relative earnings, and that such gains as women made were

ing the war years sharply improved many women's relative pay provides some support for this position.

largely the result of their breakthrough into heavy manufacturing.

The national annual earnings data and weekly wages for all production workers in Illinois both indicate that women's pay fell sharply behind men's during the early war years and never fully recovered. In manufacturing, women's relative weekly and annual earnings did indeed rise over the war years, but apparently at a rate below their long-term trend. In both Illinois and Pennsylvania, women's gains in manufacturing were-consistent with widespread belief-in large part the result of a massive shift of the female labor force into heavy industry; but the same was not true of New York, where intra-industry wage changes accounted for two-thirds of women's relative wage gain.

Thus, the belief, apparently widely shared among historians, that the war improved the relative earnings of female workers because it opened up previously all-male manufacturing industries appears to be too simple. The vulnerability of that belief should come as no surprise, since the evidence cited to substantiate it has been very tenuous-data from a few jobs or industries, usually in heavy manufacturing, and faulty Conference Board data taken in isolation.

The determinants of the changes in women's relative pay are not entirely clear. Hourly wages apparently increased for women compared to men during the war despite the undoubted decline in women's relative human capital. The relative shift of the female labor force into manufacturing, and within manufacturing the decline in interindustry segregation, probably resulted in an increase in women's relative weekly earnings, as the conventional interpretation suggests. But these factors were overshadowed by the relative decline in women's hours worked. As a result, women's relative hourly earnings rose throughout the war years (although whether at a rate exceeding that of the prewar years is unclear), but their weekly and annual pay eroded in comparison to that of male workers.




Appendix Data and Methods

Manufacturing Employment

Data in Table 2 on the proportion of male and female non-agricultural employment in manufacturing for March 1940 are from U.S. Bureau of the Census (1943, Table 1). For 1944, the male and female non-agricultural employment data are from U.S. Bureau of the Census (1947). Female manufacturing employment is taken from U.S. Women's Bureau (1946a). Male employment in manufacturing was estimated by subtracting the number of female manufacturing workers from the total of all wage and salary workers in manufacturing (contained in the Monthly Labor Review) and multiplying the result by the 1940 ratio of male employment to wage and salary workers in manufacturing.

National Industrial Segregation

The data underlying the Duncan indices calculated for the United States as a whole in Table 2 are presented in Table Al.

Illinois Data

Although Illinois collected data on wages, hours, and weekly earnings of production workers during the war years, it did not consistently disaggregate them by gender. A separate sample, however, reported weekly earnings by gender. Comparison of these samples reveals that they have very similar distributions. Hence, for each of the 12 industry groups the number of men and women were calculated as follows. Since

EMPLOYMENT = MALES + FEMALES

and PAYROLL = MW*MALES + FW*FEMALES,

it follows that MALES = (PAYROLL - FW*EMPLOYMENT)/

(MW - FW), and

FEMALES = EMPLOYMENT - MALES,

where FW and MW are female and male wages, respectively.

For the 50 industries, a slightly different proce- dure was employed. After 1941, employment and payroll data are available only as an index based on a fixed sample of establishments. Total employment (payroll) for 1944, for example, was thus calculated as the product of the ratio of the index for 1944 to its 1940 level and the 1940 value of employment (payroll). The resulting data were then employed to estimate the distribution of men and women among the industries. Although the fixed sample indices understate total employment, they can be checked by estimating Duncan indices for industry groups, which can then be compared with those computed using actual employment data. This check yielded results quite close to those found before.

The Illinois data slightly oversample metals and machinery within the manufacturing sector, and since data do not exist to reweight individual industries, nothing can be done to correct this problem. The data also greatly oversample manufacturing in comparison to non-manufacturing workers, however. Hence, calculation of a meaningful average wage of manufacturing and non-manufacturing workers combined requires estimation of appropri- ate sample weights. Sample weights were derived from Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates of the total number of male and female employees in non-agricultural industries and those in manufacturing only. The weights are as shown in Table A2.

The data used in preparing Table 3 are shown in Table A3.




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Table A2. Distribution of Male and Female Non-Agricultural Employees in Illinois,

by Sector, 1940 and 1944.

Description 1940a 1944

Male Mfg. .391 .495 Non-Mfg. .609 .505

Female Mfg. .258 .351 Non-Mfg. .742 .649 a Derived from the Census of 1940. To make the

data consistent with the estimates of non-agricultural employees for 1944, agricultural workers and propri- etors were subtracted from total employment for each gender.

Source: Illinois Department of Labor (1942:17; 1944:4).

Table A3. Weekly and Hourly Wages of Men and Women Across 25 Industries: Conference Board Data, 1914 and 1920-1948.

Men Women

Hourly Weekly Hourly Weekly Year Earnings Earnings Earnings Earnings

1914 $ .262 $13.65 $ .155 $ 7.75 1920 .642 31.69 .414 17.71 1921 .554 25.35 .362 15.63 1922 .520 25.90 .352 15.84 1923 .570 28.39 .383 17.24 1924 .592 28.27 .393 16.25 1925 .592 29.00 .389 17.17 1926 .601 29.51 .398 17.27 1927 .610 29.59 .398 17.37 1928 .614 29.95 .396 17.15 1929 .625 30.64 .398 17.61 1930 .622 27.66 .395 15.98 1931 .597 24.00 .371 14.69 1932 .526 17.96 .325 11.73 1933 .518 18.69 .340 12.25 1934 .607 21.07 .427 14.50 1935 .628 23.49 .437 15.37 1936 .651 26.02 .434 15.74 1937 .735 28.72 .437 17.02 1938 .758 26.07 .482 15.69 1939 .765 28.96 .475 17.02 1940 .784 30.64 .491 17.43 1941 .867 36.18 .533 20.29 1942 .987 43.46 .609 23.95 1943 1.103 51.05 .699 28.83 1944 1.164 54.65 .752 31.21 1945 1.185 53.47 .787 32.18 1946 1.260 50.72 .876 34.14 1947 1.414 57.77 1.007 38.99 1948 1.503 60.98 1.090 41.86

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census (1975, Series D 833-38).




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Documents

The Gender Gap in Earnings during World War II: New Evidence