SEX PROGRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 132, 5 June 1926, Page 26

SEX PROGRESS.

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

(By G. EDITH BURTOX.)

r In our ranks (women) now, we Jrumber parliamentarians, doctors, barristers, diplomats, and, in the humbler ■walks of life, women nre doing successfully almost every job that the averago man can do. We have our clubs, Our societies, guilds and leagues. We lack one another up (though there has Jxjea one glaring exception lately), w<) light tooth and nail for our rights, and generally make a very creditable phowing at placing ourselves on the map p—but—where are we now ? Have we managed to delegate to one faction our pre-ordamea desrtiny—the ■bearing of the human race ? Have we drawn lots as to who shall have careere, ■who shall be mothers? Have we set up a standard test and devised that the brainy sisters should enter the field of competition against their common enemy, "Man," and the less ibrilliant sisters labour in the home? No, Wβ have not done any of these things. We are still sacrificing our daily comforts to send those brilliant girls to become lawyers or doctors. Those wonderful girls who train expensively for bo many lean years, and who pass with flying colours, after leaving, mere male Students round the corner. Then Doctor Alice Browne returns to the land cf punga and nikau, and settles down as house surgeon at some big centre, and for six months her sacrificial parents bask in her reflected glory— then one day when the sky is quite 'blue, and propitious for dropping bolts, lappears: "The engagement is announced of Dr. A. Browne to Mr. Ploughshare of Te Rau-p.-Ra,ngi," and 18 months later Doctor Alice is wondering how she could have been so impatient with the women who passed. through her hands. Certainly, knowledge of any kind is never lost, and fasily carried around—and a doctor

is a splendid possession, and an extremely useful neighbour to an out-of-the-way district. Besides, if she is left widow she has a splendid living lefore her. I admit all those tout, would her parents have advanced that £1000 for her training had they known she would only practice a year? Would ehe, herself, have swatted year after year, had she known that the same old "woman's job" was awaiting her in less than two years after ehe was through? Yet it is the Unexpectedness of the "boy with the arrows" that keepa the world sane. It ia said of two things we are quite certain, birth and death, and to those might be added, and without. respect of persons, "love." It is quite a common thing for two doctors to enter into a double partnership, 'but I humbly offer the opinipp that a- doctor cannot le a wife, a mother, and a doctor, with the best results. And of course the same thing applies, to the other professions. Always Cupid is doing his begt, and,-it would seem, ihits hardest in '..unexpected places. At the same time,, we must not lose sight of the other side of the- trained woman question. The normal woman desires a mate, » home, and children. For aU sorts of reasons this is pot possibfe for thousands of women. Tlieu the next best thing is congenial life work, and if the woman ■whose heart was buried in the Great War, or the woman whose ideal mate lias never looked her way, and who looks despairingly into future years of work ehe detests, if she could have had Doctor A. Browne's medieaj training, or that of Jane Jones, solicitor, who has also removed her (not.the bob kind) in favour of Mrs. on her visiting cards, well, there would be /a, case of true economic value. But, alas! this Is our greatest drawback'—we never know where we are, with "this marriage" hovering around; and so pervarae Is human, nuturp, .that the girls who-' Ihave been trained almost exclusively for marriage and a home life, don't marry, and are only useful from a domestic point of vjow. They Shave no

career unless they belong to the rare type of woman whom circumstances cannot quench. So then it seems that we must endure this apparent waste (to a great extent) of training, this tragedy of the "round peg in the square hole," while Cupid is such a free lance. So far education boards appear to be the only 'body with the temerity to penalise girls for getting married. How would it do for parents of expensively trained daughters to demand a premium from their future sons-in-law? Who knows but it would send the marriage market up. It is quite a rule of life that one values more highly what one has paid for in hard cash. Never mind, sisters. In spito of all our handicaps, we have practically wiped out the dreadful lot of the "old maid" of 50 years ago. Spinsters of to-day are not looked upon as "women who were left." They are now "women who preferred to remain"—women who choose a career.