WOMEN WANTED AT BAR.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1366, 17 February 1912, Page 12

WOMEN WANTED AT BAR.

« Aspiring young Englishwomen are pointing out that even in Russia, which i 3 so often described as "centuries behind the times," the intellectual capacity of their sex is more widely recognised than it is in this country. Miss Pankhurst has been supplied with fresh ammunition by an announcement that the Russian Parliamentary commission on tribunal reforms at St. Petersburg has accepted by a large majority a Bill for admitting women' to practice as barristers. As reasons for its action, the commission cites tho needs of tho public, who complain of a dearth of legal advisers; the raising of tho .general , standing, of those at the bar, which leaves much to be desired at present, but will "doubtless benefit: greatly by the feminine element"; the "fallacy of the idea that women are incapable of performing tho duties of barristers as well as men, since women employed in tho Russian tribunals have proved that they know as much about the law as thoso who employ them." This is only the latest stage in a notable movement which has •been in progress in Russia for many years. In addition to great numbers of women doctors, there are hundreds of Russian women in highly skilled trades which in otheir countries are monopolised by men. For example, there are female engineers in the Nikolavsk ship building yards, and the Sevastopol electrical station and on the Perm-Kotlas railway. Others are employed as Government land surveyors, and some 700 women students are in training at the St. Petersburg Higher Technical College. Among Frenchwomen the greatest progress is l>eing made in literature and the arts. Reports from Paris state that women are not much attracted there by medicine and the law. After the extensive advertisement obtained by the female "avorats," it is rather surprising to hear that with few exceptions they have discontinued practice in the oourts,