MORE EMANCIPATION

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 256, 25 July 1936, Page 20

MORE EMANCIPATION

Where are Women Going?

Before the war, when I was very young, I can remember looking from my office window on to a seething crowd of people in the street below. They were surrounding a squad of police, who struggled violently in their efforts to arrest a number of militant women who styled themselves suffragettes, and who, in their turn, struggled and vociferated in the hysterical manner peculiar to their sex. These women were, for the most part, elderly, unattractive, and bespectacled, and I can remember being highly amused at their antics. That was more than 20 years ago. Since then they have succeeded, quite rightly, in obtaining that for which they vociferated —the Parliamentary vote. They have also succeeded hi obtaining a great deal more. To-day, the emancipation of woman, if slow in attainment, is proceeding unchecked. Nowadays, writes a “Mere Man” in an overseas journal, we are favoured with the presence of women in the ranks of most of the professions previously reserved for men. But if, for instance, their appearances in court are a trifle spasmodic and infrequent, it musti not be thought that this is the fault of woman, but rather of litigants who seem strangely unable to appreciate the superiority of woman’s wellknown capacity for logical reasoning.

In the realms of medical science, doctors. always a courteous people, have abandoned their exclusive attitude and have admitted the fair sex to their faculty on an equal footing. The "fact that I have never met anyone who has sought the advice of a woman doctor when in distress proves nothing, for, being only a man, I am not inquisitive. In the world of sport woman’s prowess must be acclaimed. At tennis and at golf she has made herself world famous. No one will deny her that, and I for one am not going to be so unchivalrous as to suggest that her success might be due to the fact that she does not have to compete on an equal footing with man. Although flappers of all nations have been strumming pianos since they were invented, I know of no piece of classical importance by a female composer. Again, look through the galleries of Europe, and you will find no painting of any great merit with a woman’s signature beneath it unless we except Rosa Bonheur. If, then, we can look thus down the ages and perceive a Held so barren of achievement in the cultural sphere, which is in no way governed by physical attributes, how much less need we presume that woman will be any more successful now’ that she is attempting to invade every province previously prescribed by man I believe that woman is supreme in bei- particular sphere and man in his. But for woman to say she is supreme in hers and equal to man in his is just as obviously unadulterated nonsense as to reverse t*he argument

A 27-year-old typist. Evelyn Millard, lias written a play which promises to become a West End hit. Its title is “Sonata,” and critics say it “has charm and tenderness and a good dramatic situation as well as an excellent play.”