DEMAND FOR EQUALITY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 9

DEMAND FOR EQUALITY

WOMEN TEACHERS'

SALARY AND OPPORTUNITY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 2nd January.

A demand for absolute sex equality in the teaching profession and •in all spheres of industry and public life was made by Miss S. M. Burls (West Ham) in her presidential address at the annual conference of the Natipnal Union of Women Teachers, which is in progress at Canterbury.

"What we want, as professional women," Miss .Burls said, "is freedom to apply for every post in the educational sphere. We want the impartiality which considers questions of sex and celibacy immaterial, and the justice which awards equal remuneration and equal opportunities for promotion. "No woman has complete self-respect who is working for a wage below the standard rate applicable to the post sho fills—a position forced upon tens of thousands of women in the teaching profession by the present system of two rates of remuneration for tho same task."

iJiscussing the raising of the school age to 15, Miss Burls said that it would in many cases make possible a separation of departments hitherto combined purely for economy. The development of the adolescent girl between 14 and 15 was nioro rapid and definite than that of the boy. Any difficulty that had arisen for the girl of 13 to 14 in the present senior mixed school, and any disabilities under -which sho had suffered, were likely to be emphasised unless the opportunity was seized of providing the senior girls with their own t/hool under their own headmistress. It was their duty as citizens to sco that from nursery school to university there was equality of opportunity for the girl compared with the boy. CONFERENCE EESOLUTIONS. The conference passed resolutions demanding that all avenues of promotion in the- teaching profession should be open to women equally with men; that the best ca/ndidates irrespective of sex should be appointed to the headships of all mixed schools, administrative posts, and inspectorates; and thAt equal pay should be given to men and ■women teachers of the same professional status.

Men objected, said Mrs. F. E. Key, of the Central Council, to working under women. Why should they? Prime Ministers worked under queens, Public servants worked to-day under Miss Bondfleld, and soldiers followed Boadicea and Joan of Arc to battle. What had happened to the virility of men that they should only assert themselves by insulting women? The man who could not work under a woman was not fit to teach young children, and the sooner he found another job the better for tho unfortunato children under his care. Women teachers outnumbered men by two to one, and it was evident that they could do their work as well as men. Yet no woman was a director of education, the majority of inspectors were men, and 'the tendency was to appoint men as heads of mixed schools, even when tho children were infants and juniors.

Miss G. I. Cottoll (Bristol) said that it was psychologically wrong and vicious that any body of men should differentiate between tho sexes in the teaching profession. 111-will and distrust would last as long as men and women teachers were paid differently.

Miss E. F. Phipps (London) said that the working class was as much at fault as other classes. There was often more opposition in trade unions to women getting good jobs than in professional bodies.

Another resolution was unanimously passed protesting against the dismissal of women teachers who married.

Other resolutions adopted urged the Government to discontinue help in the production of -war films aud thu organisation of military tattoos, and advocated the teaching in all secondary schools of an international auxiliary language, and the appointment of an increased number of women police with full powers of arrest.