WOMEN TO BE WOMANLY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 19, 22 July 1933, Page 8

WOMEN TO BE WOMANLY

■ * ■ ' UNDER NAZI REGIME

The women of Germany are in danger of losing the principal benefit that was given to them by the'revolution of 1918—-the. right'to vote (states -a. correspondent). ■..'■■ .:■ ; . ■■* All the friendly exhortations pf-those now; in power extolling'the beauty of' motherhood and tho duty .of preparing for it crystallise upon this one point. The .vote is not to-be taken• from : the German woman by force; she is to'bo persuaded to relinquish it of her own accord as' unworthy of her far more important place in the scheme of things.

Both tho diehard Nationalists and the revolutionary Nazis declared before the last elections that 'woman should bo preserved- from the ignoble struggle and the wear , and tear of politics; but .while- r tho Nationalists kept a few women on the party lists, tho followers 'of Hitler; acted up to their principles and proposed no women candidates at all. '. ■•'■' ' '

The cry' that woman should be "womanly," put forward so insistently at present by tho leading members of tho Government, is intimately, bound up with the .problem of unemployment. It is believed in Germany. that if women are "eliminated in particular from the clerical professions, many men at present idle will bo absorbed into Industry. : ■

Beginning at the top, company directors are employing male secretaries whenever possible, and ■-'a case has already occurred of a prominent business man that had "to fight : hard to keep his particularly efficient and valued woman secretary, without whose co-operation, -he ■ declared, he would be lost. A move is now being made to dislodge women operatives in big works in favour of men.

The falling Gorman birth rate is at tho back of this agitation. • Tho Nazis regard the future of the race as so important and their propaganda is so insistent that Germany's young men will soon regard it as a solemn duty to marry.