WOMEN'S CLAIMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 288, 5 December 1935, Page 11

WOMEN'S CLAIMS.

SUSTENANCE PAYMENTS. TO APPROACH GOVERNMENT. A meeting of two hundred women in the Trades Hall yesterday decided to communicate with Mr. M. J. Savage, urging that sustenance grants be made to women on the same basis as they are made to unemployed men in similar circumstances. The meeting was held under the auspices of the Auckland Working Women's Movement, and was presided over by Mrs. M. B. Soljak. It was pointed out that under existing legislation women had no separate identity as citizens and that where men, who became unemployed, were able to claim rerelief work or sustenance grants, women, who had to pay unemployment tax on the same scale, had no claims and had to seek charity. t

The meeting had a second object in bringing before women the necessity of registering in order to bring their claims more forcibly before the Government. It had been said that there wore no unemployed women, but when, by the courtesy of the Mayor, a registering office had been established at the Town Hall, over 50 women had registered in the first two days and there were already 172 women registered. Mrs. Soljak said that it was intended to ask the Mayor to extend the period during which they could use the Town Hall, and in the meantime to bring to the notice of women that the facilities for registering were available.

Mrs. Soljak gave details of a conversation she had had with Mr. Savage, in which, she stated, he had assured her that whatever was done for men would be done for women. He had asked her to submit proposals and had promised a speedy and favourable reply.

Mrs. M. Martinovieh was appointed a delegate to represent the branch at a conference of the movement in Wellington in January.

It was decided also to wait as a deputation on the Hospital Board at its next meeting to urge that the present grocery contract should bo suspended and that applicants for relief should be given orders on any store they chose.