Critical Look At Business Women

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31381, 29 May 1967, Page 2

Critical Look At Business Women

(Australian News and Information Bureau) Mrs Margery Hurst, who has reached the top in the London business world and runs one of the largest secretarial agencies in the world, has been in Australia taking a critical look at the position of women in business. "The attitude of Australian men to women,” she said, “is at least 50 years behind the times. Although there is still severe prejudice against women executives everywhere, it is greatest in Australia.”

Mrs Hurst would like to remedy this by establishing colleges for the higher education of women who want to reach executive level.

“I want women to sweep in the front door to the high positions,” she said, “not creep in the back door by way of secretarial jobs.” She has just opened three colleges of this type in America, where she has also been taking a critical look at the position of women. In America, she said, many women occupy top executive positions in business, but there is a surprisingly low

percentage of women doctors and politcians. In Britain this Is reversed. "There we have more professional women,” said Mrs Hurst, "but few in business." Miss Anastasia Edwards, of North Perth, who was formerly in charge of the professional section of the Commonwealth Employment Service, thinks that some of the disparity noted by Mrs Hurst may be due to women themselves. .

“Most women,” she said, "do not want to get to the top. The main reason is that through the ages they have been brought up in a different culture from men.”

An executive of the Sydney division of the Australian Institute of Management said that Australian men, unlike Americans, did not put value on women in business and doubted their qualities of leadership, but a woman executive in Sydney came near to the real trouble when she said that companies did not pay attention to a woman’s management development because they expected sooner rather than later to lose her services.