A case for working women

Press, 17 September 1976, Page 13

A case for working women

New Zealand needs a women’s bureau to form standards and policies on the employment of women. Stella Woodham, a former commercial teacher now working in an office and J executive member of the National Organisation for Women, puts this proposition in N.O.W.’s newsletter. The bureau could also be an agency for ensuring that standards were met by employers. Similar bureaus ■ have already been set up in' the United ' States and Ca- j nada. Research would be an important function. Trends in women’s work, prospects of employment, problems of training and re-entry, pay and conditions, union rights of women, their access to apprenticeships and technical training would be sur-; veyed. Studies could be made of the provision of part-time work for women and communal domestic services, as well as the difficulties encountered by married women, widows, and solo parents. Stella Woodham argues that women going back to work would prove an exceedingly good return on any investment in their further education. They would enter the labour market with far better prospects of longterm employment than girls who had just left school. Employers had generally found that older women were more stable employees, their turnover and absentee rates were lower, and they were less likely to be lost through marriage and preginancy.

Employers who got 20 years of service for five years of training — as they would from a woman starting work at 35 — would have struck an excellent bargain for themselves, the women, and the community. In making her case for better training, conditions, and opportunities for working women, Stella Woodham counts the cost of keeping a wife.

Women were not prepared for the very considerable shock of finding that they did not appear to be a visible component of the cost factor in apportioning of wages. Married men were sought for jobs because of, their stability, but the fact that wives cost money was never considered.

Women were going back into the workforce to regain their economic independence, and their self-esteem. It was no use the Government not encouraging child-care centres and hoping that by doing so women would not work — they had to work whether they liked it or not. In the great debates about working women it was often forgotten that women had always worked. Their work had been an indispensable factor in every industrial system. The Industrial Revolution did not create the woman worker, it merely removed the most productive work from the home so that anyone who wanted to do such work had to follow it to the factory, mill, and eventually, the office. Adjusting work systems to suit women with children were often inhibited by’ fear that changes would actively encourage more married women with family responsibilities to seek employment. It was, however, far better to make proper provision for the majority who would responsibly profit from it, than to make the irresponsible behaviour of a small minority the excuse for inaction.