The Un-fair Sex

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 147, 18 March 1937, Page 7

The Un-fair Sex

Frequently Ignores Natural Rules oi Justice A desire for justice goes deep. Nothing seems to stir people more surely than a suspicion that injustice is afoot. But women often are unfair, and Millicent Taylor, of the “Chrjsttian Science Monitor,” gives one instance. T2 EFORE women rubbed elbows with men on the highroads of business and the professions, comparatively few of our sex had much practice in standing in line. At such times as woman had to do it, masculine chivalry graciously gave us places we had not waited for and which we took as our natural right. In our social world this situation obtains even among us moderns.

.Perhaps this is one reason why, in a bank or before a ticket window, there seem always some women who do not “queue up” with those already waiting, but who come from the other side, or stand near the window expecting, and often getting, attention out of turn.

Even among a group of women shoppers before a grocery counter, the tendency to take an honest turn is not always as marked as it might be. How harmoniously and sweetly does justice mount her throne when some woman before a crowded meat counter answers the clerk’s “What can I do for you, madam?” by a “Thank you. but this woman beside me is first.”

'J’HESE are days of social relationships, community adjustments. An impersonal sense of justice is the guid-

ing principle of countless of our present major and minor daily activities — and of none more than what the English call “queuing up,” or waiting in line for our turn.

In a rather small but popular lunchroom in New York recently one day an elderly woman was waiting for a seat to be vacated. She had waited only a moment when a bevy of business girls, most of them in pairs, tilled the hall and doorway, eager for seats. Twice there -were two adjoining seats vacated simultaneously, and twice the business girts pushed in. maintaining that they were waiting for a pair of seats and had first right over a person who could just as well take a single seat—also, that their noon hour was short. The older woman waited some fifteen minutes longer before a few selfappointed champions intervened and insisted that whether seats were vacated singly, in pairs, or in droves, she should have her one seat, and in turn.

it is true, of course, that she could have come early or late, avoiding the rush of the short noon hour of the business girls. Yet, long experience had taught her that the place was not usually crowded until a little later. The sudden rush at this time of day was as surprising to her as it was disconcerting to the heads of the lunchroom. What was the fair thing all around, in such circumstances? It is not always easy to know the answer, especially if the circumstances arc complex and personal. But one's decision indicates one’s understanding of applied impersonal justice.