WOMEN AND RELIEF.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 298, 17 December 1935, Page 9

WOMEN AND RELIEF.

(To the Editor.) The Minister of Employment and the result of his efforts oil behalf of New Zealand's forgotten women must cause many to think of the mountain and the mouse. For it seems that his magnificently conceived gesture towards unemployed women works out to a small grant for a carefully sorted minimum number of separated wives. His announcement of his intention, conveyed to me in a telegram on the 7th instant—the first definite publication of any scheme including women—plainly stated that all registered unemployed women would participate in certain Christmas relief. This pronouncement was the result of a letter and a telegram from me setting out the representations of the Working Women's Movement and stressing the importance of including women in view of the steadily increasing number of registrations at the Town Hall. As a matter of fact, there were close on 300 registered at the time the telegram was sent. Press reports of the 9th instant made it plain that the Minister admitted that this decision was the result of representations from Auckland, and as no organisation but the Working Women's Movement had the matter in mind it must be conceded that it was the body responsible for inducing the Government to acknowledge women's claim to relief. In passing I must deprecate the Minister's attempts to fasten blame for the confusion that has ensued on me personally. I

The various changes of policy which have taken place since the first publication of his intention regarding women tend to indicate a disturbing uncertainty as to the wisdom of his generous gesture. He had evidently soon lost the first fine, careless rapture induced by the assumption of the role of all-embracing benevolence. Or were there other "representations from Auckland" of a totally different kind? Whate\ er the facts may be, I, whom he assails, am sure of my ground, and am supported in the contention that any confusion or misrepresentation has not originated with me or my organisation, but from another quarter. Even the Mayor, Mr. Ernest Davis, considered the Minister's telegram conveyed information of sufficient importance to warrant the extension of the time for registering at the Town Hall. To say that I started the registrations going is absurd on the face of it.

The large body of women with whom I am associated in the claim for general recognition of women's right to a share in the benefits from the unemployment fund on the same terms as men are disappointed, but neither dismayed nor discouraged. ~Y\ e set out to secure sustenance for -women, and feel confident that our fellow citizens—men and women—will support us in this objective when the Christmas bonus is spent and forgotten. M. B. SOLJAK. [The misunderstanding, it is clear, has arisen over the word "registered." The Minister assured our correspondent that the Christmas bonus would be payable to women who were "registered and eligible." He might have added, "at the date of the announcement of the bonus," but this qualification should have been obvious. The listing of names at the Town Hall did not amount to "registration" under the Unemployment Act, and it is unfortunate that those who signed then names should have been "aiiied the impression that they had qualified for the bonus. The Town Hall list was opened, before the bonus was announced, for the purpose of ascertaining the number of unemployed women in the city.—Ed.]