Favourable attitudes to equal pay

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33461, 16 February 1974, Page 6

Favourable attitudes to equal pay

Most employers interviewed in a recently-pub-lished survey were prepared to employ working mothers. Some concessions such as more flexible working hours or time off for shopping would be allowed, although some employers had reservations about women with pre-school children. “Whs Employ Women?” is a follow-up to the first survey of the Society for Research on Women. “Urban Women.” The follow-up survey, in March 1971, covered 1055 employers in six main centres in New Zealand. All industries except those which employed relatively few women were represented in it. Some respondents said they would employ mothers only if they had made adequate child-minding arrangements. This concern was in

all cases for the mother’s ef-i ficiency as a worker, not for; 1 the family, the report says. 1 It was considered the'.

mother’s responsibility to make adequate child-care ar-1 rangements. Most employers preferred to employ women in the 26 to 35 age-group — “old enough to be sensible, young enough to be decorative” — according to the report. The report says, however, that this is the age-group where comparatively fewer women are available to the work force, being the peak group for child bearing and rearing. There are few jobs from which a woman is excluded on grounds of age alone, the report found, although certain industrial groupings favour particular ages. Truck found. —A six-ton frozen-food truck taken from a Glenfield depot on Monday was recovered by the police in Remuera on Wednesday night. Its load was intact. — (P.A.) .