Equal Pay for Equal Work.
[Labor]. Strachan, Grace. C. Equal Pay for Equal Work. The story of the struggle for justice being made by the women teachers of the city of New York. New York: B.F. Buck & Company, 1910.
8vo.; portrait illustrations preceding title page and throughout printed on coated paper; red cloth, stamped in green; some foxing on top edge; lightly soiled; extremities slightly frayed.
First edition. In her moving preface, Strachan explains that her fight for equal pay for female teachers in New York boils down to a struggle for “simple justice” and an effort to expose the “moral danger involved in the unjust practice of paying for service according to the sex of the servant.”
Strachan systematically addresses the issue of sex discrimination and its effect on women’s salaries, beginning with examining Section 1091 in the New York city charter, known as the Davis Law, which states that a teacher’s sex is a factor of consideration, along with years of teaching experience and merit, when determining salary. Strachan holds this idea to be unconstitutional and degrading, and proceeds to call into question the city’s claim to need male teachers for “special purposes,” which results in a gender-wage gap. Strachan’s group, the Interborough Association of Women Teachers (I.A.W.T.), presented many resolutions to the Board of Education, and Equal Pay for Equal Work traces the history of the legislative battle led by Strachan and her fellow activists. Strachan finishes her argument by reprinting dozens of editorials from various New York publications in support of the I.A.W.T. cause, written by prominent members of the clergy, as well as by scholars and lawyers.
Grace C. Strachan was the third acting President of the I.A.W.T. as well as a member of the Committee on Teachers’ Salaries, Tenure, and Pensions of the National Education Association, founded in 1907. As District Superintendent in charge of Districts 33 and 35, Strachan had 38,000 children and over 1,000 teachers under supervision, and her districts represented the “best and the most up-to-date expression of all forms of work in elementary schools and Junior High Schools.” Under her leadership, some of the first classes for handicapped and deaf children in New York were offered (Biographical Cyclopedia of U.S. Women).
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