ABSTRACT
The scholarly, intellectual, public and political debate over equal pay was, if not dominated, then at least shaped, by women's contributions. This chapter focuses on the arguments of three major contributors: Beatrice Potter Webb, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Eleanor Rathbone. Sidney Webb's is one of the first economic analyses of the gender pay gap. Webb and Fawcett made the women's wage issue special case within general creed to defend, respectively, classical liberalism and Fabianism. Webb's "new set of considerations" referred mainly to differences in bargaining power. Constitutional struggle for regulation would improve bargaining power for labour to ask for "minimum of civilized existence". Beatrice Webb challenged the "laissez-faire" views on labour legislation, but also dismissed the common idea that regulation will diminish the demand for women's work. Both Millicent Fawcett and Beatrice Webb were fighting for higher ideals rather than only women's hours of labour. Fawcett struggled to secure equal citizenship for women while Webb was fighting for constitutional socialism.
