urs
of labour for women in many of their industrial occupations and forbid
them to undertake night-work, cannot be reasonably held to reduce the
net efficiency of women's labour taken as an aggregate, they must be
allowed to diminish the direct net productiveness of women in certain
employments as compared with men, and either to bar them out of these
employments or engage them upon lower wages. In certain textile
factories where goods of some special pattern are woven at short
notice, and where overtime is essential, women cannot be employed. In
the Post Office, where night-work is required at certain seasons,
women are at a disadvantage, which is doubtless reflected in the lower
wages they receive.

(7) Lastly, the inferior mobility of woman as compared with man has an
influence in reducing the average efficiency of her labour. On the one
hand, women are more liable to have the locality of their home fixed
by the requirements of the male worker in the family; on the other
hand, they are physically less competent to undertake work far from
their home. Hence they are far more narrowly restricted in their
choice of work than men. They must often choose not that work they
like best, or can do best, or which is most remunerative, but that
which lies near at hand. This restriction implies that large numbers
of women undertake low-skilled, low-paid, ineffective, and irregular
work at their own homes or in some neighbouring work-room, instead of
engaging in the more productive and more remunerative work of the
large factories. Every limitation in freedom of choice of work
signifies a reduction in the average effectiveness of labour.

Sec. 6. These elements of inferior physique and manual skill, lower
intelligence and mental capacity, lack of education and knowledge of
life, irregularity of work, more restricted freedom of choice, must in
different degrees contribute to the inferior productivity of woman's
industrial labour.

In regarding this influence the experienced student of industrial
questions hardly requires to be reminded that these must be regarded
not merely as causes of low wages, but also as effects. This constant
recognition of the interaction of the phenomena we are regarding as
cause and effect is essential to a scientific conception of industrial
society. Women are paid low wages because they are relatively
inefficient workers, but they also are inefficient workers because
they are paid low wages.

While