A Voss and Pike Casefile: The Early Days
Section 49: Equal and Opposite
You published Ruth’s case that week, with Peggy’s wage sums and Iris’s arithmetic about the tea rota laid out in a table that nobody could argue with. The tribunal found for the packers: back pay, a regraded line, a front-page apology that read like a grudging cheque.
It was a fine, loud victory. Forty women stood in the yard outside the shed with their coats over their overalls and their faces turned to the grey light, and for a minute nobody said anything, because nobody had ever expected to be asked.
But Rudd’s committee still had no woman on it. Harborline’s offer still stood. And on Sunday Penhale led the hymn with the steadiest voice in the chapel, and went home to the key in his pocket.
“We won something real,” said Jonah.
“We did,” you said, “and somebody is still walking about who shouldn’t be.”
Sociological note: Liberal feminism: change through law and anti-discrimination measures (the Equal Pay Act, the Sex Discrimination Act) won real gains. But a lens that sees only gender misses the economic base, the owners' conflict and the actor on the stair. Reform of the rules is not the same as an explanation of the night.