Dangerous Age

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 72, 17 December 1938, Page 7 (Supplement)

Dangerous Age

Women Workers At

Forty-five

("Dominion” Special Service: By Airmail.)

LONDON, November 30. TpORTY-FIVE is the perilous age for women workers, according to the Ministry of Labour. This view was put before the Government Committee on pensions for unmarried women at 55. "Generally speaking,” stated the Ministry’s memorandum, “age itself does not prevent an elderly woman from retaining employment. The more, however, that age brings with it a diminution of capacity and the loss of qualifications regarded as essential for the business, the more uncertain becomes the position of the older worker and the greater the prospect of the loss of her employment when any reduction in staff may be carried out. “Such a position may arise at any age after and even earlier in the casg of workers in the distributive and I hotel trades and in clerical occupations, j and becomes progressively more difficult in the higher age groups. “The prospects of older women of . regaining a footing in industry, once employment has been lost, are generally lees than those of retaining employment, and recede as age increases. ■ “It is doubtful,” the memorandum . concludes, “whether the grant of pen- | sions to unmarried women of 55 years I of age would affect to any great extent either their own chance of continued or further employment or those of women below that age; or whether, were such pensions to be granted, the grant need be made subject to a condition (which would apparently be very difficult to enforce) requiring abstention from work.”

i Miss Cloward, an American business woman who is visiting New Zealand, remarked on the small number of women in business in New Zealand, especially in comparison with the United States. Krom her conversations with New Zealanders she thought that the younger generation would probably be less conservative, as they showed a greater interest in the business world.