WOMEN SECRETARIES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 76, 10 January 1928, Page 2

WOMEN SECRETARIES.

SUPERIOR TO MEN. Women make better private secretaries than men, says a renowned Gerpian philosopher and psychologist, Oskar Schmitz, and proceeds to give reasons for the statement in a. Viennese newspaper. Herr Schmitz —he has the distinction of rot being a professor—is not writing particularly of German women. He has a ' wide acquaintance with the women of all Continental nations, as may be gathered 1 from his many books of travel.

The writer holds the opinion that women have comparatively little sense of duty in general; ir.stemj, they feel devotion in particular. He cites the inefficiency of women civil servants, where they serve the public in a. department, not a human being with whom they come in daily contact. “A post as secretary, that most responsible modern he writes, “is specially adapted to women, more so then the other feminine careers of teacher and hospital nurse, because of its pronounced individual character; the close relation to one person is better than the relation to many. • • • \ “A secretary, truly, must possess great understanding and judgment, but in decisive moments she needs no independent judgment. Once she has been given the desired_jjirection, she may be left to make independent, farreaching decisions along those lines, .and experience proves she can be trusted further than many a man. This may be explained by the fact that a woman, if there is the slightest occasion foi> it, will work through love. “I do notv mean that she must be literally in love with the person whose assistant she is (although this is more often the case, in some degree, however slight, than she herself knows or would admit), but it is woman’s way to put feeling into everything, even the carrying out of duties once accepted. And when a womdn has taken a post as secretary where any degree of feeling is involved 1 , she accepts nil reservedly all its conditions and implications, whereas a man would examine them critically.”

Hen 1 Schmitz goes on to say that criticism is not called for from a secretary, and the critical masculine attitude, which often makes a man. throw up his job or irritate his employer, is absent in women when they have once devoted themselves to a task. It may be that the man would find a better system for carrying out the work because of that critical attitude toward it, hut if lie is not above the average in intelligence he is apt only to become discontented. He will do his duty—the masculine conscience will drive him to do that much —hut the bare carrying out of a secretary’s duties does not make an ideal secretary. The woman will do more, she will put her heart into her work.