‘Politics Swept Under a Domestic Carpet’? Fracturing Domesticity and the Male Bread-Winner Wage: Women’s Economic Citizenship, 1920s–1940s

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INCREASING ATTENTION given recently to the role of the state in the development of the family wage system in Australasia has made it a familiar story. Most commentators are agreed that the family wage concept was one of the guiding principles of the unique, state-instituted, compulsory arbitration system which was established, first in New Zealand in 1894, and, by 1916, in Australia, at both the federal and state levels. The family wage was to be paid to all men on the basis that they supported a wife and two or three children. Women were regarded as not having any dependents and were, consequently, paid less than men. Justice Henry Higgins gave the family wage concept its most famous enshrinement from the Australian Federal Arbitration Court bench in 1907 in his 'Harvester Judgement' and in his 1919 decision on a female minimum wage. The concept was cited in New Zealand wage-fixing in the 1922 General Wage Order. In the 1936 Industrial, Conciliation and Arbitration Amendment Act the family wage, 'sufficient to enable a man . . . to maintain a wife and three children in a fair and reasonable standard of comfort' defined a basic wage.' But even before its final legislative apotheosis, 'the idea of a family wage' had led to differential rates between men and women. The family wage concept, which privileged men as the family breadwinner, is also held responsible for a range of other economic disadvantages for women...