WOMEN OVER FIFTY

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 58, 10 March 1938, Page 8

WOMEN OVER FIFTY

(To the Editor.)

Sir.,-^-1 have read with very great interest "A New Zealander's" comments on a Pensions Bill amendment in re-; gard to widows over the age of 50, and" I feel very strongly that before Parliament considers reducing the term of residence to ten years, first • considera- j tion should be given to these women who are not sufficiently incapacitated to apply for the invalids pension, and yet have been born,, have raised their families in,; and in fact, have never been out of this Dominion. Now, because'of their precarious age and their inability to obtain employment, they are forced to accept charity.l To quote a case well known to me, and there must be many such cases: A mother who has been a widow lor 20 years and has struggled with I very limited means to bring up her family of three, finds her two sons married (with no money to spare to make their mother an allowance of any kind), and her daughter, earning a small salary (from which is deducted wage tax and union fees, and still more taxes to come, from all accounts), her only support. With a rent of 30s to pay weekly, it can be imagined what meagre comfort is left to that mother who has spent all she ever had in order that her family should be decently brought up.

I am sure that the Prime Minister in his schemes for. the betterment of New Zealand people, could' do no better than to consider the plight of these "widows over 50."—1 am, etc., . BORN NEW ZEALANDER.