AMONG OURSELVES,

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 134, 8 June 1928, Page 10

AMONG OURSELVES,

A WEEKLY BUDGET. j (By CONSTANCE CLYDE.) Of all the eastern countries, perhaps Persia is the one in which women are in the most backward condition. In certain parts of that land, so famed in oldtime romance, the literate among our sex is two per cent, in others nothing at all. So averse are the men to improvement that not so many years ago, in this country, a male reformer was threatened with crucifixion because of a paper he wrote, "The Emancipation of Woman," having to flee the country in order to escape this fate. Now there is a group called Young Persia in imitation of the Young Turks, and women are appearing more in public, though as yet teaching is the only profession open to them. The veil, cast aside by the Turkish women, and even forbidden them, is still the usual fashion, and in cases where girls have gone out without this veil (in reality more of an eye mask), male relatives, aided by the police, have interfered. Polygamy is still popular, whereas in Turkey it is out of fashion, and there is also a form of lesser marriage, called mutta, of which, however, cynics might say it is a modern form of our oft-quoted companionate marriage, rather than a survival of old Persia.

CHILD WELFARE IN PENNSYLVANIA. A writer on the above subject mentions that in Pennsylvania, there are vacant two thousand beds in the orphanages, and yet the people continue founding new institutions. This is an example of that crowd psychology, which has considered the welfare of the child so long that it has quite forgotten what the welfare is. From being nobody's child, the little one is made everybody's child, whereas his real welfare consists in being somebody's child. A list of millionaire death bed charities shows a fair proportion of money given to benefit children in institutions, and many consider that it is time to call a halt. It is told that Mrs. Russell Sage has left forty out of her fifty millions to institutions, for children and others, and, as English writers have often pointed out, the inclination to fill up institutions sometimes neutralises the tendency to discover whether this is for the benefit of the child as well as the institution.

WOMEN AS SCHOOL TEACHERS. The Birthday honour paid Miss MacLean, headmistress in Wellington College, is an honour to all the women of a profession which has much to contend with, especially as regards its feminine members. More than in any other profession are women up against the antifeminist complex in men confreres, and, for some reasons, while doctors, lawyers, and even, nowadays, clergymen, do not object to see a woman put above them (if she has earned that privilege), men teachers are quite unashamed of showing rancour at the "indignity of having to go to a woman superior for orders." Thus in Newcastle (England), recently the National Association of Schoolmasters has been discussing a resolution affirming opposition to an assistant master serving under a woman, and pledging the association "to support any member who refused to serve under a headmistress." The trouble possibly lies in the fact that the male teacher is often under an inferiority complex, this largely due to the other fact that this profession is interfered with by outsiders more than any other.

WOMEN POLICE IN GERMANY. Says the "Women's Leader"—"lt is interesting to learn that the employment of women police in Germany is spreading. In Prussia there are now 60 women in the police force, distributed in seven towns. In Baden 12 are employed, and in Saxony six. At Hamburg a department of women police is in progress of organisation, and at present nine women agents are employed. The period of training lasts from four to five years, which is considerably longer than that undergone by the regular police, the object being to equip the women, more effectively than men, as social and protective police. According to a report submitted to a committee of the League of Nations by the chief inspector°of police at Hamburg, "interest in the question of women police in Germany dates from the institutions founded at Cologne during the British occupation, in cooperation between English and German women."

AN AIR LADY. At the moment of writing all eyes are on the long flight which is to end at Brisbane. Women, too, have their air triumphs. Says Mr. Frederick Guest of the over-Africa flight of Lady Heath: "I wonder if the average reader realises what a tremendous feat this was. . . The bush country is an endless desolation. The.chances of rescue, if a forced landing occurred, are little less hopeless than if it took place in the Atlantic. I should like to take off my hat to this gallant lady on her return from a most hazardous trans-Continental flight." Her machine was a 30-h.p. Avro-Avian aeroplane. °