ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to answer why an Act that seemed to offer women workers so much provided so little improvement in the situation and the pay of women industrial workers. The strategy which trade union leaders adopted regarding legislation for equal pay meant that the Trades Union Congress (TUC) played the central role as coordinator and negotiator for the trade union movement's equal pay policy. The equal pay issue provides further insight into the way various and competing groups struggle with each other and in the process help formulate government policy. If the government's equal pay policy is analysed as it was being constructed the numerous influences upon policy can be identified. The conflict between the TUC and the Confederation of British Industry may have helped construct the eventual equal pay policy but without the determination of the Labour government to act on the matter the debates lacked purpose.
