WOMEN IN PARLIAMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 65, 14 September 1933, Page 12

WOMEN IN PARLIAMENT

NOT FREQUENT TALKERS

KEEN AND BUSY WORKERS

(From "The Post's'; Representative.) LONDON, August C.

A special correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" considers the question of whether women members of Parliament arc getting a fair chance of displaying their oratorical qualities in the House of Commons.

If tho women members are not heard frequently on tho floor of tho Houso (says the writer) they are seen constantly and observed doing valuable work for their constituencies.

The Duchess of Atholl and Miss Eleanor Kathbone are the two most frequent and versatile speakers. For a long time tho Duchess has been, concentrating on Eussian , dumping and tho unfairness of labour conditions in Russia in competition with the labour market in this country, and she is taking a very full share in the organised movement against the Government's Indian policy. From .the beginning of tho Parliamentary session last November until the Whitsuntide ad-, journment tho Duchess spoke twentysevon columns of Hansard, five columns less than Miss Kathbone. With her twelve questions she had six less than the popular representative of tho English Universities, but the Duchess had fourteen non-oral /questions to her credit, whereas Miss Kathbone had none. •

Viscountess Astor, whose interventions have been much fewer in recent mouths, is the only one of the fifteen women members who has still a drawing power, inasmuch that members will file into the Chamber from the reading and writing-rooms as sooii as sho gets /up. Lady Astor spoke sixteen columns and asked fifty-eight questions in the period mentioned. Miss Florence Horsbrugh, who sits for Dundee, relates every trade agreement to tho jute industry of Dundee. CONSISTENT LISTENERS. The most silent of tho women members are tho most consistent listeners. They are in their places almost every hour of the day and night. Among those are Mrs. Mavis Tate (seven columns, seven questions), Mrs. H. B. Shaw, and Mrs. Kunge. Mrs. Ward, Miss Ward, and Mrs. Copeland are very practical iu their interventions. Although they seldom speak, they always bring in matters affecting the industrial interests of their Constituencies.