FULL EQUALITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 112, 14 May 1929, Page 9

FULL EQUALITY.

WOMEN TEACHERS' DEMAND. 'SERVICE TO THE UTTERMOST' PRESIDENT'S APPEAL. Miss E. Andrews, president of the New Zealand Women Teachers' Association.. in her presidential address to delegates at the opening of the annual conference in Wellington, dealt in detail with the awakening of women to their right to education and of their position in the teaching profession to-day. There Avcre men, said Miss Andrews, who, in opposing the enfranchisement of women in England, argued that the franchise would give them nothing not already enjoyed, and who ridiculed the te;rm "emancipation" as quite meaningless applied to women, who had never been slaves. Although that was literally correct, was there not a bondage of the spirit more subtle, more terrible, more degrading, than any that could be enforced by whips and' chains? Those who denied that women as a class had ever experienced bondage were entirely ant of the psychology of subjection, and until it was- clearly perceived how forcibly the idea of inferiority had been impressed upon the minds of young girls, not merely in connection with education, but by religion, by law, and by custom; until it was perceived that women had had to contend always against the indifference, often against the active prejudice, contempt, and jealously of men to obtain education proprietary rights, the opportunity to labour at any save inferior occupations, it was impossible to understand what was meant by the term "subjection." The unfair treatment meted out to women .in almost every department of life was no new thing, said the speaker, nor was it peculiar to any particular era or nationality. It was not the result of malice nor of conscious oppression; it was not due to any one man or body of men, but it was the result of an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances which, through the passing of years, had become buttressed by tradition and hallowed by antiquity. In Stuart Days. It was onjy by contemplation of the status of women in the later Stuart period that one perceived the tremendous advance which women had made in the last century, said Miss Andrews, who drew a picture of the state of women during the reigns of Charles 11. and James 11. Sensuality was rife and produced a general and all-pervading contempt for the understanding and character of women, and was clearly i indicated in the literature of the period. 1 Even among the temperate Puritans, their very zeal caused them to severely restrict the liberty of their womenfolk, A respectable woman of that time was nothing but the potential mother of children, and out of this unfortunate conception of womanhood had been developed the whole of her status in civil and canon law. The ideal of marriage had reached its lowest level. There was also a quite deliberate discouragement of feminine education. Only very gradually dawned the recognition by women, anil afterwards by men, that women bad minds as veil as bodies. Current Events Arouse. Out of this morass of intellectual and moral degradation, women had been struggling for two centuries, and very little progress had been made until the last sixty or seventy years. As stars on a dark night shone the names of those men and wemen who first dared to raise their voices in protest against the established order as relating to the status of women—such people as Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Astelh, and Daniel Defoe. How did any great change come about t History supplied two factors. It might almost-be said that English women cut their mental teeth on the war of American Independence and the French. Revolution. In such palpitating times how could any human being refrain from thinking? Other factors which operated in establishing a truer standard of thought with regard to women were the cult of Byronism, which, despite its excesses, did much to sweep away the cant and hypocrisy surrounding the relations of the sexes, and later the establishment of the factory system, which, literally drove women to acquire the cardinal virtue of self-reliance.

Mill the Champion. About the middle of the last century, said Miss Andrews, the disparity in the numerical strength of the sexes first became noticeable, and many women were forced by sheer necessity to earn a living. They mostly became governesses because that was practically the only calling open to them, and it was the alarming ignorance of these poor drudges which led to the first attempts at affording higher mental training for women. John Stuart Mill was a doughty champion of womenkind, and since the publication of his great work, "The Subjection of Women," the forward movement of women had greatly progressed. Luring the last century women had at last thought for themselves, acted for themselves, worked for themselves, and erected their own standard of modest and good conduct. In New Zealand To-day. "Yet here to-day in New Zealand we see the survival of the ancient prejudice against the freedom of opportunity demanded by womenkind," continued Miss Andrews. "In our own profession we find women kept in subordinate positions in every branch of the service. Even our fellow teachers, who are supposed to be mentally welldeveloped, acquiesce in and so tacitly approve of a condition of affairs reminiscent of England in the eighteenth century. Is there in the whole of New Zealand in our primary schools a woman head teacher of a large school? Is there a woman inspector? Is there a woman holding a responsible position in the Department of Education? In short, are women and men treated impartially? On every side we see junior men fiesh from the training colleges stepping into positions and obtaining promotion with little or no competition, while women wait for years before they can take one of the few, the very few, advancing steps available. We see men teaching beside us in the schools, and their reports from inspectors are very similar to our own. They step into hcadteacherships, they become organising teachers, there is no question of their abil'iy, no apparent shadow of doubt as to their Divine right to all positions which carry with thorn freedom from the drudgery of class teaching. . . Women teachers do not ask for preferential treatment; they do not ask for concessions or indulgencies. They ask for justice for the simple equity which is supposed to obtain in all parts of our Empire. Women have emerged from the darkness and mental inertia of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Now in the morning of the twentieth century they stand alert and capable, able and eager for the highest service for which their training and natural ability fit them. That is all they ask — opportunity for service to the uttermost. No favours, but no handicaps; no concessions, but no restrictions; no hampering of ability, and therefore no wastage of the social lifeblood, which, after all, is the one vital factor operating for peace and progress amid all the turbulence of modern civilisation."