FEMINIST FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 102, 2 May 1931, Page 4 (Supplement)

FEMINIST FORUM.

MORAL PROBLEMS. HARDSHIPS OF WORKING MEN. ■' ' ■ (By A FEMINIST CORRESPONDENT.) The spirit of research is rampant and is peering in every direction to:discover the exact sources of the evils of our day, and Mrs. Corbett Ashby, president of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, told delegates to the annual council meeting, which opened in London recently: "The moral problems of our young people are largely the result, not of the generation, but of the economic situation which postpones marriage." She added that custom, trade union regulations and legislation: were combining to exclude women from new work, and that lower salaries, lack of promotion and earlier retiring wer. threatening the unmarried; Nationality of Married Women. She discussed the question of equality of sexes in regard to nationality, and Mrs. Ashby referred to the bill introduced by the late Dr. Ethel Bentham, and said that owing to a technical difficulty it seemed unlikely that anyone would be able to pick up the bill where it was left at the time of Dr. Bentham's death. The British Government had apparently taken the line that it did not like to do anything on its own, but must "wait for the Dominions." Surely, without conferring with the Dominions, this country could give them a lead. The conference decided to press on the Government the need to carry out the recommendation (5.3 the Hague Convention to introduce into their law the principle of the equality of sexes in matter of nationality, and asked the Government to introduce and pass a bill dealing with nationality of married women on these lines. Birth Control. The fact that the Minister of Health has rescinded the policy hitherto followed by his Department, and removed the ban on dissemination of birth control information, was received with pleasure by the delegates, who supported a resolution calling on the societies affiliated to their union to bring pressure to bear on town councils and other local bodies to make use of the powers now within their reach. The Open Door Council gave evidence before a committee now sitting in the House of Lords through their president, Miss Chrystal Macmillan. The committee is inquiring into the way in which power is being arrogated by Ministers, who achieve by Departmental order what is not set forth by statute. This power in the hands of Ministers, she averred, was being used to affect the status of women relatively to that of men. She said that if it were ever thought desirable to alter the legal status of any group of individuals it should certainly not be done except explicitly by Act of when the whole bearings of the question could be fully and publicly discussed. , .-..• Women's Low «Wages. Minimum rates of wages had been fixed by trade boards in 42 trades in Great Britain, and in the great majority of processes the minimum rates were fixed very much lower for women than for men—in many cases a little over half. These 42 trades covered some 1,500,000 workers. The system was really a gigantic scheme which had the effect of standardising the position of the woman as lower than that of the male worker; he was by law authorised to enforce a higher minimum wage because of his sex. By the operation of this delegated power low status was being legally imposed on women in am ever-increasing number of trades by Ministerial edict. Millions of Working Women. Just what is happening among those millions of working women who now constitute the electorate is described in a book which, to use the well-worn cliche, contains some real "human documents" —the life stories of members of the Women's Co-operative Guild—-"Life as I Have Known It" (Hogarth Press, 5/). Within its covers is unfolded life of the many who —as Mrs. Pember Reeves so well called it—lived on round about a pound a week. One can best indicate what lies within its pages by quoting from the introductory letter from Virginia Woolf to Margaret Llewellyn Davies, the veteran founder, who has edited the book. Hardships of Women. "The writing,,a literary critic might say, lacks detachment and imaginative breadth, even as the women themselves lacked variety and play of feature. . . . These pages have some qualities. . . . and when Mrs. Burrows brings to mind that bitter day when the children were about to eat their cold; dinner and drink their cold tea under the hedge and the ugly woman asked them into her parlour saying, 'Bring these children into my house and let them eat their dinner there,' the words are simple, but it is difficult to see how they could say more. . . . These lives are still # half hidden in profound obscurity. even what is expressed here has been a work of labour and difficulty. The writing has been done in kitchens, at odds and ends of leisure, in the midst of distractions and obstacles —but really there is no need for me in a letter addressed to you to lay stress upon the hardship of working women's lives." Successful Women Police. Opposition to the idea of women police is showing some signs of decrease. Thus at a meeting of about 50 members of the House of Commons this week. Sir John Sandeman Allen, M.P., supported the view'that pressure should be put on local .authorities to make use of women police. He has had experience as a town councillor in Liverpool of the problems the Watch Committee has to face, and that experience has converted him. There the question has been very acute for a very determined chairman of the Watch Committee who would have nothing to do with women police has long obstructed public feeling in their favour. An entertaining point of view was put forward by Sir Robert Hutchison, M.P. (former Liberal Whip), who believes that policewomen would be more effective if. they did not copy policemen in uniform, but were "to adopt something softer and more refined." That, he said, would enlist more sympathy with them. He declared for pressure on the Home Secretary to review past experience and to report progress. Lady Iveagh, M.P. for Southend (who is an Onslow) was for hurrying Scotland on also, and her resolution calling on the Home Secretary and the Secretary for Scotland to draft resolutions for policewomen for submission to a Police Council called and selected for that purpose; was carried.