Pigou’s treatment of the question of women’s wages has to be situated within his overall approach to women’s place in the economy. In the Economics of Welfare, he develops a blue print for improvements in the efficiency of capitalist societies which includes an elaborate state-run welfare system. The major intent of this system is to rehabilitate the poorer portion of the working class and make it productive. In this system women are assigned to non-market reproductive work, a type of activity which is not recognized as contributing to the nation’s economic welfare and which is not paid. Women must therefore rely on male family members; income and /or on state welfare payments for subsistence. Employed women are not guaranteed access to a living income, as Pigou rejects the concept of minimum wage. He advocates a national human capital investment policy but restricts its scope to the improvement of male workers’ skills. For him, the focus of women’s education should be their domestic ‘duties’.
