Abstract
In 1944, the British War Cabinet set up a Royal Commission on Equal Pay to examine whether equal pay between men and women should be implemented for the civil services and across industries in general. The Commissioners reviewed an impressive amount of evidence, testimonies, and reports, among which memoranda from ten economists—Philip Sargant Florence, Roy F. Harrod, John R. Hicks, Hubert D. Henderson, Arthur C. Pigou, Joan Robinson, David H. MacGregor, David Ross, Hamilton Whyte, and Barbara Wootton. After the publication of the report in 1946, equal pay for equal work was not granted to civil servants and not advocated as an organizing principle of labour markets. The first section describes the origins, context, and content of the 200-pages report. Section 2 is devoted to the arguments presented by the ten economists in favour and against the principle of equal pay for equal work. The last section ponders the political weight of arguments from economists, medical doctors, and other scientists, as well as the political instrumentalization of the commission itself, and concludes on the relatively low relevance of economic expertise at the time, in comparison to moral and medical arguments.