THE HOUSEWIFE AND THE ELECTIONS

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 304, 18 September 1943, Page 6

THE HOUSEWIFE AND THE ELECTIONS

Next Saturday the electors will discharge the duty of electing" to Parliament those who will direct the affairs of the Dominion possibly for the next three years. The importance of this individual responsibility on the part of the elector is becoming more widely recognized, especially by the womenfolk, and this may be due, to some extent, to the broadcasting of proceedings in the House of Representatives. Ihe debates heard over the air may not always have been edifying, or particularly enlightening, but they have shown people how the machinery of the State works and how the Government of the day obtains the power to regiment the lives of the citizens in so many ways. The reaction has been to make people realize. more clearly, than ever that their power to control Parliament lies entirely in the wise use of their own individual vote at elections. That is the ultimate source, of authority in a self-governing country, the explanation of the political dictum that a nation gets the Government it deserves. It was inevitable that there should be, especially among housewives, an awakened interest in recent times in what might be termed domestic economics. Housewives have experienced a first, real measure of bureaucratic control, and while they have been quite willing to face many inconveniences that they realized could not well be avoided under war conditions, they already feel a strong resentment at the prospect of this becoming the established order. 1 hat, together with the increasing evidence of needless restrictions, mismanagement, and bureaucratic disregard of individual convenience and. needs, may be taken as the underlying causes of their downright dislike of the Internal Marketing Department and its effects on their daily lives. Their suspicion of official figures relating to the cost of .living is equally justified by their own experiences and those of their neighbours. Their personal experience, the facts that they know cannot be challenged, are much more convincing than the figures compiled to suit, the Goveinffient spokesmen, and today these things are linked in their minds with political issues on which they will have to cast their votes next wee k. It seems clear that with many women electors they have taken precedence of any personal aspect of the election campaign, and maybe this is not a bad thing. Women frequently show a more practical directness than men in getting down to cause and effect in matters within the province of the economics of the home; and.they certainly have had ample opportunity in recent times to form an accurate judgment of tie irritating, unnecessary, and usually costly, encroachments by the present Government on the daily routine of their lives. . The fact that the state of things now in operation is hkely to continue so long as the present Government continues m office, was made clear when the Minister of Finance, in the address, broadcast from Christchurch, said that import control must be continued, alter the war so that the country would obtain what it needed, not simply what it wanted or what could be sold at a profit. Women natuia y feel that they' know, better than any department of State, far better than our autocratic Ministers of Finance and Marketing, what they and their families need. . . These activities and sayings of Ministers and their bureaucratic departments have combined' to make people see what the inevitable effects of State control must be, and they clearly do not like the prospect And they see, too, that it lies within their power to do something decisive, by the exercise of their vote, to change the direction of State policy. That is the factor in this campaign which even the most expert student of public affairs will find it difficult to estimate. It is not an issue, expressed in any party platform, but something that touches our way of life, our domestic concerns and arrangements, the homely freedom’s. For that reason it may prove the deciding factor at the coming polls and the women voters may carry the day.