International Women’s and Labour Networks and the Struggle for Gender Wage Justice: The ILO’s Minimum Wage Policy of 1927/1928 as a Turning Point

Abstract The article discusses the political struggles over gender-equitable wage policies that surrounded the emergence of the first international policy instruments on the minimum wage. The making of the ILO instruments on ‘minimum wage-fixing machineries’ adopted in 1928 intensified the interaction between the ILO, trade unions, and women’s networks regarding the relationship between the minimum wage, the living wage, and equal pay, and gave a major boost to the internationalisation of the politics of gender wage justice. The article argues that the events of 1927/1928 constituted a turning point in the longer-term history of the international politics of equal pay and the minimum wage. It demonstrates that a full history of the politics of women’s wages must carefully consider the diverging visions on the intertwinement between gender and class interests, and the role of paid and unpaid labour in the lives of working-class women and men, which shaped the mindsets of the actors.