Sex Equality in War Compensation
The battle for equal compensation for men and women sustaining war injuries was half-won in the House of Commons on Wednesday, when the Government's concession of a Select Committee to go into the whole question reduced its critics in the lobby to 95. Mrs. Tate, who led the revolt, has raised a question to which there is only one logical answer. The point at issue is not that of "equal pay for equal work," to which it was always possible to object that the work of women was not necessarily equal to the work of men engaged on the same job. The demand is for equal compensation for equal injuries. The acceptance of the latter demand by no means necessarily carries with it acceptance of the former. The expense involved in providing medical treatment for a man is exactly the same as the expense involved in treating a woman. If either is permanently disabled, the cost of maintenance is the same in the one case as in the other, and requires a similar pension. The position is palpably absurd where discrimination is made between a widower and a widow with the same number of dependent children. Feminists will not, of course, cease to press their wider demands for what they believe to be an issue of sex equality in industrial wage-payments. But that is not the point now urged. Here the case is perfectly clear-cut. A man and a woman have been injured in the war. There is no difference between their sufferings or in the expenses of alleviating them. To discriminate is an unquestionable denial of sex equality.
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