Where Women Work And Men Help—A Little

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30157, 14 June 1963, Page 2

Where Women Work And Men Help—A Little

(From Our Own Reporter)

TIMARU, June 13.

In North Borneo, Mr A. D. Dick watched women with 61b hammers breaking stones, placing them into wicker baskets, carrying these loads on their heads and tipping them into trucks. “Men were working. They drove the trucks,” said Mr Dick, who is member of Parliament for Waitaki, in an address to a sympathetic audience of women at the Adult Education Centre today.

Mr Dick, with other members of the House of Representatives, recently visited Indonesia and the proposed Malaysian “quintet” He said that he had also seen a woman in Bali carrying green coconuts, weighing at least 801 b. in 10 tiers on her head. Men had lifted the loads on to her head, said Mr Dick.

Rather than to indicate the manner in which Balinese women develop an erect and graceful carriage, his comments were designed to acquaint the meeting with the activities, such as tar-sealing the streets, carried out by women in parts of South-east Asia.

He said that, generally speaking, throughout Southeast Asian countries, the woman’s place had been one of servility, and they had been required to do a lot of hard, manual work. Before Indonesia obtained her independence, about 4 per cent, of the people were literate. Today, about 83 per cent, were literate. Mr Dick said.

Women were starting to take a vast interest in national affairs and. in most countries, women were occupying high positions of State 'A striking feature of the

women and children was their cleanliness. “It is a fetish with them,” he said. The women of Indonesia were not as well looked after, or as well educated as women in other countries, and many of them lived in poor and primitive conditions, said Mr Dick.

European women living in places such as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, depended almost entirely on native waiting women. In the British Commonwealth camp they were living in the “grand manner,” with cheap native labour, air-conditioned houses, and clubs with private swimming pools, Mr Dick said.