THE MARRIED WORKER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 206, 1 September 1933, Page 9

THE MARRIED WORKER.

Attacks upon the married women worker are not confined to the land where Hitler reigns, writes Helena Normanton in an English paper. Let us look first at that august assemblage, Liverpool University. Its Charter states that women are eligible for all positions in the University. Upon its staff there came in 1925 a Dr. Miller—a doctor of philosophy and a most exceptionally gifted and travelled authority upon agricultural economics—a woman of outstanding ability. In the summer of 1932 she-married a colleague in research. By October the Vice-Chancellor had raised the question of the employment of married women. In February of this year the Council of the University passed a resolution that women members of the University should lose their appointments upon marriage. Most thoughtfully, that new rule was made retrospective. However, a far more important and practical body, the British Chambers of Commerce in conference contemptuously threw out a resolution askino- for dismissal of married women from "jobs. Certain consequences follow. The capital and training which fitted Dr. Miller for her work are as wasted as if she had been smitten with cancer. Her invalid mother whom she was maintaining abroad must be fetched home to face a climate which may shorten her days. Dr. Miller's husband must abandon original research in order to do more immediately remunerative work so as to keep his wife. But these are effects which no man's organisation will accept as th# natural result of thenpolicy.