Women and the Right to Earn

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 109, 1 February 1930, Page 19

Women and the Right to Earn

A Digest of Various Opinions A Press Association message from London during the week stated that a ballot of seven thousand women members of the Civil Service Clerical Association, to ascertain the viewpoint on the marriage bar, result ed in a surprisingly decisive vote against the retention of positions after marriage.

The question of women’s right to earn, irrespective of their statemarried or single—has been occupying a good deal of space n the newspapers lately. A week or so ago, there was a lively discussion in the columns of the New Zealand Press on the subject of the married woman teacher’s right to an appointment when she had a husband able to support her. On this Point “National Education in its current issue observes that the “principle involved is quite simple “If a teaching appointment is to be filled, it should be given t applicant best qualified, of all the candidates, to teach. Should this be departed from, the system of basing appointments on efficiency will be imPaire d;, The q UeS (; iou has been allowed to become somewhat involved by the introduction of the unemployment issue. On the face of it, there would appear to be an injustice in giving an appointment to a married woman Whose husband is able to support her, when single women teachers are out of employment. We can see light on this side of the difficulty if we ask ourselves whether the schools are established for the purpose of educating the children, or providing men and women with employment. Obviously we Xt .arm the first part at the QMStlon. Ami « the ehtlfire. are a have the best education available, the best teachers must be appointed. Tie fact that a highly-qualified woman teacher happens to be married is a side issue, as also is the incidental occurrence of unemployment “There is evidence of a definite increase in the number of young men and women marrying, the wives remaining in their employment It is not confined to the teaching profession. The same thing is happening in commercial life. As to whether this is a good thing or a bad, depends upon the Sfiu.r» p«i»( r>e». »»»• •• ’>• * Hon of the modern woman to assert her economic quality and rights. M e do not think that women in the mass are greatly concerned about their economic status. Rather are they, and their husbands, thinking about their econom c necessity, which is a very different thing. From another point of view this departure from the old-fashioned tradition which kept the wife in the home to rear her husband’s children and' placed supreme importance on the « MMta Ml »e ■ the munity, especially if the practice becomes common. TO EARN “PIN-MONEY” Mr J H Thomas, British Minister for Unemployment, does not approve of married women earning- “It is not only uneconomic; it is not only unfair, but it is against the nation’s interests for women to work for what they call pin-money and deprive other people of legitimate work 'he says “I should be the last to say a word that could be construed as implying that’l am in any way unmindful of the absolute necessity of women working as well as men, but I often wonder how many women there are in industry who need not be.” . 1 „ That efficiently-conducted women’s journal, Time and Tide, n rejoinder to Mb. Thomas, says: “If a million women were to-day removed

from industry, they would still have to be kept by somebody. The keeping of a million idlers, who may consume but are forbidden to produce, does not really enrich the community: it merely lays upon it an additional —and heavy —burden.” “It is true that there are conceivably circumstances,” says the “Woman’s Leader,”/“in which anyone, whether man or woman, alrea'dy having sufficient for their maintenance, would be acting against the interests of the community in accepting a routine job at the expense of someone who needs it in order to live. But a general appeal such as Mr. Thomas’s is likely to increase the prejudice against, the employment of women, the great majority of whom work not for the provision of luxuries but of necessities, and to encourage the pernicious doctrines both that work is a charity and that there is a limited amount of work to go round. “It would almost appear as though some people were afflicted with a kind of sectional communism which they apply only to one sex. In the case of women it is proper that wealth should be distributed ‘unto each according as she has need.’ In the case of men, the job is to the efficient

and the salary to him who can earn it- —and the desire to earn it, even on the top of a parental allowance or an unearned pittance, is laudable ambition stimulated by legitimate desire for an infinitely expanding standard of life. There may be something to be said for the communist philosophy of distribution in general, but there is nothing whatever to be said for its application to one sex.” THE BROAD GENERAL PRINCIPLE “As regards the broad general principle,” says the “Birmingham Post,” “who will venture to contradict Lady Rhondda when, indignantly rebuking the Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Thomas), she maintains that ‘all wealth is produced by work; the more workers a nation has the more prosperous it will be.’ As a general proposition it is incontrovertible. “AU the same, he was entitled to refer to it; and if Lady Rhondda rebukes him for his ignorance of economics, and the General Secretary of the National Union of Women Teachers charges him with fomenting a ‘new sex war,’ he will not lack sympathisers. “For it is a fact that very many women—perhaps a majority of those employed—go into industry with not the least intention of working for wages longer than they need; and it is also a fact that very many of them take ‘pin money,’ or money which merely supplements a family budget already reasonably adequate, in respect of work which they could at any time abandon if they chose. “Certainly Mr. Thomas’s own responsibilities would be lightened if wage-earning married women, and wage-earning girls who have no positive economic obligation to leave home, were fewer. The argument that ‘every woman has a right to work, no matter what her position may be,’ is to this extent fallacious. Personal rights .may have to yield from time' to time to social exigencies; the decisive question at any given moment is: What is socially advantageous? Even now there are women’s organisations, such as the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, which recognise: (1) That, most girls actually prefer domestic life, and (2) that ‘in these days of unemployment’ the married woman who leaves her home to work—save under pressure of necessity—takes a selfish course, probably to the detriment of somebody else, less fortunate. “Mr. Thomas was not concerned with the relative advantages, from a woman’s point of view, of wage-earning and marriage. His argument was based on economic grounds, and it was good enough for his purpose. It has displeased some women, and it can hardly be relished by some fellow Ministers. It will be applauded, none the less, by more folk than it will offend.”. . “It is impossible,” points out the “Yorkshire Post,” “to draw a hard and fast line between ‘legitimate’ and ‘non-legitimate’ spheres of women’s work, just as it is impossible to declare that in one case a mantled woman or an unmarried daughter rightly seeks to add to the family income or to earn her own living, and in another case is not reasonably entitled to do so. “Moreover, any such rigid definition and differentiation might presently recoil upon the heads of those who attempted it, if we should fortunately see the industries of the country so

■ far recover that there is a shortage of male labour, bringing women workers into great demand. “But the circumstances of this present time are exceptional, and for that reason we think that Mr. Thomas showed good sense, as well as courage, in urging that young women should / not be encouraged now to crowd into industrial occupations for which men are at least equally suitable.” “Householders who in other days would have been financially equipped to provide for their daughters,” says the “Scotsman,” “if they desired it, a home-life of comparative idleness, are obliged by the changed economic conditions to allow them to find occupations outside the domestic sphere. Few fathers or daughters would welcome a return to the pre-war social obligations, and few, indeed, would be equipped to bear them. “But the providently-disposed parent, recalling the pronouncements of Socialist doctrinaires —the threat of rising death-duties, of the total abolition, even, of inheritance —may well feel bound In duty to encourge his daughters to seek every means that may be found to provide themselves with a training and equipment that will render them independent of any financial inheritance.”