The de-prioritisation of physicality in the economy placed value in expertise and skill, regardless of the worker’s sex or age. Attempts to remain biased where being male or middle-aged did not confer comparative advantage would be punished by the market. A company willing to hire any employee who could do the mentally demanding job would succeed at the expense of the retrograde company persisting in arbitrary discrimination. Inequality, previously having existed between healthy men and everybody else, now existed between those with and without the required skills. Women with similar qualifications would earn the same as men, even before laws to enforce it. People could expect to earn more even into their 50s and 60s. The invisible hand of the market put a premium on a new, more egalitarian type of productivity.