"UNFAIR TREATMENT."

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 112, 14 May 1934, Page 10

"UNFAIR TREATMENT."

HELP OF WOMEN. "For many years women were in little better ease than were children, nor does one have to search far to-day to discover evidence of unfair treatment of our sex," stated Miss E. Andrews, the president, at a reception to members of the New Zealand Women Teachers Association in Wellington. The tradition Iwe two are one, and I am I he,' dies hard. So we still have the anomaly of a woman losing her nation'ality on marriage with an alien; we I still luck the obstetrical hospital which I medical science tells us is absolutely necessary to help in the reduction of our maternal mortality rate; we still are faced with the fact that in an election of parents' representatives to certain of our secondary schools' boards a child is considered to have only one parent, and that one the father. "In our profession we have women of proved ability kept in inferior positions by artificial barriers based on ignorance, prejudice, and fear, and we have the calm acceptance of such a situation by the community, because the natural result of three generations of education in such a tradition has been the creation in the adolescent mind of a belief in the inferiority of woman. In one respect she is the inferior of man. She usually lacks his physical strength, but as yet no prophet has arisen to proclaim the gospel that brawn rules the world. Every now and then, .we have an ebullition of feeling in one quarter or another resulting in statements to the effect that there are certain wonderful masculine virtues which can be implanted in the hearts 'of boys only by male teachers. I give such statements the lie. There are no masculine virtues. Neither are there any feminine virtues. Tliera is virtue, which 'is compounded of fine qualities such as honour, purity, and courage, and he would be a feckless creature who would claim virtue to be

the monopoly of either sex. "On the cover of our professional magazine appears this caption, 'As is the school, so is the nation.' Hence, just as women teachers* are prevented from giving their best service in our

schools, so our country lags behind many others in recognition of the necessity for women's help in affairs of State and in the provision of opportunity for women to participate fully in the life of the nation."