Abstract

Female sales assistants and checkout operators in the retail sector earned 79.7 per cent of the male sales assistants and checkout operators' gross weekly wage in 1992. This article examines some of the reasons put forward by Robinson and Wallace in the 1970s for pay differences between men and women in retailing. By using data from the New Earnings Survey this paper compares pay differentials in retailing in 1992 by kind of retail business and examines in particular pay differentials of sales assistants and checkout operators. The paper suggests that differentials between men and women's earnings in retailing remain and that explanations for these differences are not dissimilar to those found by Robinson and Wallace in the 1970s.