160 SOCIAL SCIENTIST physical limitations and their mental preoccupations with domestic problems* Maurice Dobb, in his Wages (1959), also notes that "it is sometimes said that because women are more liable to illness... apply themselves temporarily to an employer for this reason alone^. 6 Plato is said to have considered women to be generally less efficient in all arts but lesser men have been less dogmatic. See for instance FY Edgeworth. "Equal Pay to Men and Women for Equal Work'^, Economic Journal, 1922.Maurice Dobb, in his book Wages written first in 1928, .spoke of operations in which "women will be definitely superior, as in certain operations of cotton spinning or in teaching small children; while for heavy masculine operations like coal hewing and iron moulding women will clearly be unsuited^. 9 Janice Fanning Madden, The Economics of Sex Discrimination, Duke University, 1972. Janice Madden draws (p 57) a diagram only for the mixed occupation to show that there at least both males and females work at the same wage rate. She differentiates between the supply of male and female labour so that more females are forthcoming than men for a given wage. Possibly, the underlying assumption is that if men are getting a higher wage in the male occupation then what the women are getting in the female occupation (as Joan Robinson would put it, male transfer wage) is higher than female wage. But then the mixed occupation would not remain so. It will become a female occupation.) 7 Gary S Becker, The Economics of Discrimination, University of Chicago Press 1957. Actually Becker chooses to express his "d2, the discrimination coefficient, in terms of the premium over and above Ae black workers wage. His equation would read as: W^ - (1+d) W^ 9 Joan Robinson, The Economics of Imperfect Competition, 1969, pp 301-4. 9 Maurice Dobb also subscribes to the view than "in explaining the wideness of this difference ^between wages of male and female labour) the conditions of supply of female labour probably plays a decisive part.ff He goes on: "If the supply-price of women's labour is generally lower than that of men, (his by itself would suffice to explain the lower rates paid in women^s trades. This in fact seems to be the case", Wages 1959, p 150. I ° Leela Gulati. "Sex Discrimination in Farm Wages", op. cit., II Here again, Maurice Dobb has an explanation to offer when he suggests that "in any given locality the supply curve of women^s labour, after a point, becomes distinctly inelastic in the sense that a steadily rising price would have to be offered to attract additional quantities of women's labour into the labour market... Special circumstances are necessary to swell their ranks in any appreciable numbers from among those who usually stay at home and attend to domestic duties, This inelasticity of supply beyond a point, when combined with the fact that competition between employers for labour is imperfect, will result in the wages of those in employment remaining low, and employers being reluctant to extend their employment of women for fear of this increased demand for female labour raising the price of this labour all round to their own disadvantage". Wages, p 153.