340,500 WOMEN WORK

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31306, 28 February 1967, Page 3

340,500 WOMEN WORK

(N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON, February 27. Last year women in full-time employment in New Zealand reached the unprecedented total of more than 277,000, while women in part-time employment reached the also unprecedented total of more than 63,500. These figures were given tonight by Mrs I. Tombleson, member of Parliament for Gisborne, in an address to the Wellington Business and Pro-

fessional Women’s Club. Her subject was “The Challenge of a Changing World—Women and Employment.” Mrs Tombleson said that While the figures showed the change in the volume of women working they were “not nearly so marked in the variety of jobs held. “In the main, New Zealand women work in those fields which do not call for extensive training or education. They work as a means of earning a living for a relatively short time, or as a means of

raising extra money, rather than seeking career satisfaction in a chosen field,” she said.

“Employment figures show this plainly. About one married women in eight in New Zealand is currently in some sort of employment. Married women, indeed, constitute one-third of the female labour force, compared with only one-twelfth 25 years ago.” Mrs Tombleson said the general tendency for New Zealand women to go into short-term occupations was marked as early as school leaving. Only 4 per cent went to university. Marrying Age

Mrs Tombleson said the general pattern showed up again in the general average age of girls marrying. Over recent decades this had fallen steadily until by 1959 it was 22 years, and the age for the birth of the first child was 23 years.

“This, in turn, has created a new problem—so called ‘suburban neurosis’—or boredom in the middle to late 30s or early 405,” she said. By that time, families had in a vast majority of cases reached the teen years. The result had been the current agitation for some action to be taken to harvest the wastage of skills and abilities of these young married women

who found their time insufficiently occupied. Mrs Tombleson said the 4 per cent of university women acquitted themselves very well proportionately compar ed with the 10 per cent of male entrants. “Their range of interests is also wider than one would imagine from looking at occupational statistics, but in so many cases, the numbers are so small as to be virtually swallowed up in the workaday world.” Advocating a greater liberality of attitude to women in professions and in new occupational areas, Mrs Tombleson said that in this women had as great a responsiblity as men. Where there was a choice between a male and a female practitioner, women generally tended to lean towards professional help from men. “Best Hope" “The technical age which we are now entering offers perhaps the best hope and the best scope for widening any new employment avenues for women,” said Mrs Tombleson. The handiest example of the new age was the computer. While it might have taken a lot of clerks out of their old positions and put them elsewhere, it had also created a big demand for new and more sophisticated skills.