WOMAN QUESTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 307, 28 December 1935, Page 3 (Supplement)

WOMAN QUESTION.

POSITION IN NEW ZEALAND.

THE SOCIAL BARRIERS

(By VERA J. CROWTHER.)

Not a woman in Parliament! The pity of it. Though among the Labour members now in power there may be feminist sympathisers and champions, the programme of the party advertises no item that shows recognition of the need for changed laws to apply to the changing status of New Zealand women.

In England the Labour movement, during its growth, staunchly supported the march of women to emancipation. Provincial towns had their Labour clubs, and national working class movements their holiday and week-end club houses, where women congregated side by side with men as a matter of course. The order of the more conservative clubs was a membership only of men, who organised occasional social activities to which women or children were invited. Observable at these congregations of Labour people was a wholesome masculine acceptance of women as intelligent and complementary beings; and an almost complete lack of that super 6ex consciousness of the unfortunate human male whom society had educated to a specious gallantry, and to the inhibition of sane and decent ideas on fundamental subjects. The position of women in the Dominion has been different from that of women in England, of course. There, through the slaughter of men in war, through greater accident mortality in coal mines, etc., among men than women, through, the emigration of greater numbers of men to the colonies, and such like causes, a large proportion of the female population came under the category of "superfluous women." The odium of this slighting reference, which was particularly popular after the Great War, was reflected on all women of the nation, and stimulated that independence and political mindedness for which those erstwhile militant suffragettes were the first organised protagonists. The old conservative type of woman was a shameful stumbling block to the battling sisterhood. Myriads of women, nursed under the Victorian system, passively deplored the exodus from domesticity or vegetation. Would they have faith in the ability of a woman doctor to cure the ills of their poor maltreated bodies? Not they; nor trust life and limb to the skill of a woman automobile driver. So well did the cock strut and crow in those fair patriarchal times that the less clarion cackle of the hen, when she raised it to advertise her contribution to the finished product, was by comparison a hoax. Inferiority Overcome. But women have advanced in industry, commerce and the professions; their habitual sex inferiority complex has been overcome; they are more publicly articulate and gradually .are winning, over the odds of criticism and ostracism, the confidence of both men and women. They stand for, and are elected to the English Parliament in increasing numbers.

Here, until recent years, women have been much in the minority, and thus have been courted and flattered as the prospective and actual helpmeets of men. Once embarked on matrimony and motherhood, the average woman conscientiously applied herself .to the management of her home, and the service of her family. Quite naturally, the importance of woman to a pioneering community was appreciated. As a matter of course, and in accordance with the decaying Western European tradition, women took little interest in politics. For that matter, the average man is far more concerned with football and horse-racing than legislation when things are smooth for him.

The enfranchisement of women, passed so surprisingly more than two decades ago, meant nothing-more, in most cases, than "another vote for father." To many women, still apathetic in the shelter of comparative security, I think it means just the same to-day. These women delude themselves that their sex still enjoy the universal protection and esteem of indulgent menfolk, whose anxious chivalry was the result of nothing less fundamental than the competitive instinct of the ardent male in a land where females were comparatively scarce.

tively scarce. The causes of this esteem are now departing. Women are no longer precious by virtue of their small numbers; tlie recent poll shows that men and women voted in almost equal numbers; and they have become a menace to their brothers, by permitting themselves to be exploited in industry, trade and commerce. Men under the spell of the old sweet tradition, proclaim still their solicitude and respect for women; but whilst indulging and pampering, when able, their own women —which men in full legal possession do not always do, of course—they can only reiterate their unsubstantial respect on behalf of other women. For we know that both directly and indirectly individual men, and big companies of men, exploit, rob and discard women, with r,s little unction as the relict widows of India- received when they were consigned to the flames of the funeral pyre. Masculine Chivalry. To accord with man's natural possessive instinct this must always have been so, but "the ethics of masculine chivalry were never questioned when every man was able to support his probably hard won wife according to his station; and when this was a truly democratic Dominion where caste %vas the romantic heritage of older worlds, and where simplicity, plenty, and tonic work ordered the day. Relief work, sustenance, and Government subsidised charitable aid, have erected the first real social barriers in New Zealand. Although many country women here work harder and longer than it is deemed possible for a woman to work; women in New Zealand, <renerallv speaking, have until late years had little material hardship to endure, and no public humiliation to apprehend in the "uise of charitable aid rent payments, provision tickets, free blankets, and second hand clothes. So the' New Zealand Labour party has never been importuned by women grown conscious of accumulating injustices, to embrace the woman question. Neither women nor the working classes as awhole have realised -;"ntil now, the need to watch, and unfte to combat, the oppression of the greedy powers that are drunken with wealth, and are strangling the progress that by the light of science and the potentialities of human reason should be universal and unlimited.