SEX AND OCCUPATION.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 152, 28 June 1924, Page 13

SEX AND OCCUPATION.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —To arrive at a definite conclusion about the employment of women, you would only have to enforce equal payment for women workers, and about 75 per cent would be looking for positions elsewhere. I can quote various iims that have lost considerable business through unsatisfactory business methods, resulting in most instances through the employment of women, the majority of whom are-snot versed in business methods, and never will be. In some instances, no doubt, girls get through the work, but that is not all that is required, by any means. The majority have absolutely no head for business, and, having been in charge of a staff in a large firm of accountants, I can speak from other than an employer's point of view. , To say that women are robbing men of , a livelihood is only too true. During ! the war they "nobly" took the places of j j those who were doing the work of a I mere man, and after the war ignobly | ! stuck to the jobs. It is admitted that there are some positions which are held I by men that could be just as well filled, by women, because it does not appear | Ito the lay mind that you require an ' extra special headpiece to measure a | ] yard of ribbon, but there are numbers [ j who, through no fault of their o-.vn, are not suited to anything that requires I brute strength. I wish a few more of our citizens would profit by the example of our City Fathers, and teach women their place, seeing that they cannot appreciate the line of demarcation, as ! far as man's sphere is concerned. They | { expect chivalry, when they haven't the ] slightest comprehension of any dignity I themselves. —I am. etc.. "11 BAR."

I ! (To the Editor.) | • Sir, —I read with interest the account of the City Council's action in refusing to grant a conductor's license to a woman. We will grant that their motive was disinterested—that they really acted with a regard for the "dignity and grace" of their daughters; but might they not, with equal reason, view , with paternal disfavour the unmanly ! occupations pursued by many of their sons? Do they not feel that the authoi ritv, dignity, and manliness of their own sex is gravely compromised by 1..05e members of it who hesitate not to stand in shop windows, dressing and undressin"-, to the most intimate items of lintrerie, those waxen, deathly, life-like made to represent the weaker | (?) sex. An inspiring sight, O my j ■ fathers, and one calculated to make your I manly bosoms swell with pride. I lived j for many years in the back-blocks, and as there* were no shops within twelve | miles the women of the place were do- j ' pendent for their drapery needs on the I i bin- shops here in Auckland, whose agents | i travelled twice yearly with samples. Those agents were always of the "sterner sex," and I have seen women and girls I also (in the absence of their mothers) , placed in the humiliating position of having to order their under-linen from strange men. It is something of an ordeal, even to the modern girl, to be obliged to discuss with a man the quantity of material necessary to make cerain unmentionable garments. (They could always tell us, though, to an inch of lace.) Now. sir. is the one pursuit more unwomanly than the other is unmanly? I don't think-so, putting aside the question of man's right to limit a woman's sphere of labour, providing that labour is honest and useful. Ido think, though; that it is time some of 'our "City Mothers" took a hand in our civic administration. Of equal ability. lam I sure they would also prove to have more common sense, and infinitely more I tolerance than their male prototypes. —I i am, etc., FATHER'S PET. j