WOMEN'S FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 99, 29 April 1933, Page 15

WOMEN'S FORUM.

AMERICAN CABINET MIJNISXKK,

MISS FRANCES PERKINS.

Miss Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labour in the Roosevelt Cabinet, and the first woman ever to hold such a position in the United States, is slender, fine-looking, and something under five and a half feet in height. She has brown hair, alert brown eyes, and a good nose, but the feature \yhich perhaps most distinguishes her is a mobile and sensitive mouth. She dresses smartly. Possessed of a strikingly strong and' pleasing personality, Frances Perkins makes a vivkl impression on all who meet her. A noted legal light once asserted she had the finest judicial mind ho had ever encountered. Asked about Miss Perkins, an associate described her as one of the abTest persons, man or i woman, of this generation. One of her strongest supporters for the Secretaryship of Laboiu'. was said to have been Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt. At any rate, Mrs. Roosevelt is one of her firm admirers. She has said of her: "Frances Perkins is fi charming and highly efficient person. She is one of the most remarkable women I know, and one who brings to her work splendid training, knowledge and ability." Frances Perkins—her married name is Mrs. Paul Wilson—was born in Boston on April

10, ISB2, and attended the Universities of Pennsylvania and Columbia. She was an ablo student and later her lectures on sociology proved her an able teacher. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson live in New York. They have a daughter, Suzanna, who is now in a preparatory school and expects within a comparativel3 r short time to enter college. Miss Perkins has held positions of trust almost too numerous to mention. She has been executive secretary of the Consumers' League, executive secretary of the Committee on Safety, director of investigations of the New York factory committee, executive director of the New York Council of Organisations for War head of tlio State Industrial Commission, chairman of the State Industrial Board, director of the Council on Immigrant Education, director of the American Child Hygiene Association, the Child Labour Commission, the Consumers' League, the Maternity Centre Association, and a member of many other groups devoted to sociology, political science and health. JAPANESE WOMEN. A Japanese lady will not grudge a whole day epent in front of her mirror while her attendant*applies the pomade so necessary for her elaborate coiffure. Her abundant tresses cannot be too smooth and stiff for the elaborate designs into which they are formed. It is only while they are young that Japanese women have a wealth of hair, much of it disappears when they aie about thirty, and, as old ago creeps on, their attiro becomes severely 6impie. There i is no pretence about being younger than they are—that is an idea which would , strike them as decidedly foolish—and so little do they mind the world knowing their ages that the arrangement of hair shows the^ different stages they have reached in. life s journey.

SPANISH DIPLOMAT. The daughter of the writer, Don Jose Salaverria, Senorita Margarita Salaverria, has become Spain's first woman diplomat. She was tlie ! only successful woman candidate at the recent examinations for entry into the diplomatic service, in which women were allowed to take part for the first time. Senorita Salaverria is under 23 years of age, and had always wanted to be a lawyer. She studied at Madrid University, specialising in mercantile law in which she recently took her diploma.