Women’s Interests Seminar At Apia

Press, Volume C, Issue 29623, 20 September 1961, Page 2

Women’s Interests Seminar At Apia

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

APIA. One of the hardest working groups in the Pacific this month can be found at the women's interests seminar held by the South Pacific Commission at the Papuata Girls’ School, near Apia, Western Samoa. Attended by 43 women participants from 15 Pacific territories, the seminar is the first of its kind ever to have been held and hi the culmination of two years and a half of planning by Miss Marjorie Stewart, women’s interests officer of the commission. The seminar opened on August 29 and -will continue to September 21 with a full time-table from 9 am. to 9 p.m. each day, including Saturday. Studies include the opportunities for education and the development of activities for women throughout the world, the status of women in the Pacific, the opportunities and responsibilities of women in meeting family and community needs, planning community education programmes, organising and conducting group activities, means of communication, and the needs to be met for continuing improvement in family life. According to Dr. Richard Seddon, executive officer for social development of the South Pacific Commission, the main purposes of the project are to promote the interests of women in partnership with existing agencies and village and community authorities: to develop women’s groups as one of the means of furthering the process of adult education towards family and community benefit: and to examine some of the means by which women may be helped towards a fuller understanding of opportunities and ways of meeting them from their individual resources and those of the community. Grant The South Pacific Commission has been helped in this work bv a generous grant from the United Church Women of America, and among those attending the seminar as consultants are Dr. Mary E. Keister, home economics officer of the Food and Agriculture Organisation from Rome: Miss Nicole Friderich from the Department of Education at UNESCO. in Paris, and Miss Freda Gwilliam from the Commonwealth Technical Aid Scheme in London. Also attending as an observer is Mrs M. Schroder. New Zealand, area vice-president of ffie Associated County Women of the world.

Miss Stewart said that the seminar was a training course and not merely a conference. "We have a very good group of people who are personally involved in women's interest work in these territories.” she said. “They are keen to learn new techniques for community education, and are working very hard.” She said that one of the chief advantages of a seminar such as this was in the exchange of ideas between people from different territories. “There is not the slightest doubt." she said, “that this seminar has achieved a great deal in stimulating the thoughts of all who are taking part, and in giving them a new sense of the scope of women's responsibilities and opportunities in the community." Women’s Influence Miss Stewart quoted the women’s committees in Samoa villages as an example of the important influence women’s groups can have in helping to raise standards of health and, so on in the community. “The idea is for district nurses and others to provide programmes for betterment, and for the women's groups to be a useful means to propagate their teaching” she said. The last week of the

seminar will be devoted to discussing in detail further policy for the development of training of leaders, and the use of resources both in the Pacific and world agencies for the training of women leaders in all the Pacific territories. The possibilities of establishing one or two central learning institutes will also be discussed. When asked what the men thought about this increasing emancipation of women and their growing participation in affairs throughout the Pacific, Miss Stewart said: “We have never found any real opposition to the development of women’s interests. Some of the men have been against it as a waste of time," but, when they find their wives can cook better beals, sew better and become better housekeepers and mothers they soon change their views.”