WOMAN'S PLACE

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 87, 13 April 1933, Page 6

WOMAN'S PLACE

The subject of woman's place in the modem world, revived by Mr. Philip J. Soljak's vert readable article on "English Youth," sfiems to have strayed from the original path. Mr. Soljak, in fairness to the modern miss, pointed out that.the average English girl had far more "go," and was far more self-reliant, than her equally average brother. In social life she was frank and gay, in- contrast with her wooden escort. Now, this is all to the good, so far as the girl is concerned, and these qualities of enterprise, self-reliance, frankness and gaiety in womankind, help to make tins sadly-tortured world a happier place. They enrich social and home life. The pity of it is that girls have come to regard an active business or professional life- as their birthright. They contend that they, are entitled to compete with mere man on the labour market. Of course, their services are valued, as a rule, considerably lower than those of tlie male, which makes a female employee more desirable than a male in the eyes of many employers. The technocrats tell us that machinery has thrown the worker into the street, but must we have a new science to show us that woman has ousted about the same number of men as the machine? If women, in this period of acute world depression and unemployment, were to revert to type, and regard the liome, a husband and a family in the light of their Victorian mothers, would not the problem of the workless male surplus be greatly simplified? G.W.W.