WOMEN IN JAPAN

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25367, 15 December 1947, Page 2

WOMEN IN JAPAN

OPPORTUNITIES TO PROGRESS

“How many Japanese women have you got on the committee that ife planning the rebuilding of Hiroshima?” This awkward question, put by a Y.W.C.A. visitor to the Japanese Mayor, who was accompanying a party’s inspection of the ruins, caused amusement among the women and some embarrassment to the Mayor- . The story was told by Miss Leila Bridgman, national general secretary of the Y.W.C.A. of Australia, in an interview. Miss Bridgman, who has been paying a brief visit to Auckland to see her family, visited Japan recently. Finishing the story, she said with a smile, “The Mayor hummed and ha’d, and finally a voice murmured that ‘women’s place was in the home.’ ” Miss Bridgman’s visit to Japan was made with 11 other women from the World’s Council of the Y.W.C.A., representing about 10 nationalities, the object being to meet Japanese women. Not all women in Japan were suppressed before the war, according to Miss Bridgman. “The Japanese women in the Y.W.C.A. were mostly well educated and used to responsibilities. At the home of the Prime Minister we met 70 Japanese women, representing Women’s organisations which haa existed before the war. They should now have an opportunity to progress in new ways,” she added. Referring to the way in which the Allied authorities were helping the Japanese women to become emancipated, Miss Bridgman said that she met a young American wotnan who was working with the trade unions, with this object in view.