GOOD "STICKERS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 84, 10 April 1937, Page 14

GOOD "STICKERS."

WOMEN IN CIVIL SERVICE.

. In their efforts to capture the "littering prizes of Whitehall women have proved themselves to be "stickers," states an exchange. After, five successive years of failure to win even a single place in the world's hardest examination for administration posts in the Civil Service, they scored a record success, four women securing places. present-day paper, in which questions are put on contemporary subjects (social, economic and political), and where effective and skilful exposition is rewarded, one of them scored 83 marks out of the maximum of 100. Only one man with 86 marks did better. In examinations of a lower standard women have always more than held their own against men, but it was realised that unless they were able to capture a fair proportion of the "seats of the mighty" in Whitehall the status of women in the Civil Service would be an inferior one.

Their peak year was 1925, when they were first admitted and when they won outright three places with 27 candidates. Whitehall was more shaken by this feminine raid on its masculine preserves than by any enemv raid of the jwar.. Pitted against the elite of Oxford Cambridge—all honours men—it had been confidently believed that no woman could possibly succeed in this competition. ; .

Women's fuccess makes it certain ,;tshatt We shall, one day see a wojpan the permanent head of the Ministry of Labour/ or/Abe Ministry of Health, or even in charge of the national housekeeping at the Treasury itself.