NATIONAL REGISTER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 132, 1 December 1938, Page 15

NATIONAL REGISTER

SUGGESTION TO BUSINESS WOMEN

The suggestion that a National Register of women be compiled for civil defence purposes was made yesterday by Miss Nelle Scanlan, at a luncheon held by the Business and Professional Women's Round Table Club, at the Y.W.C.A.

Miss Scanlan spoke of the lack of adequate training and preparation in civilian defence in London at the time of the recent European crisis, and urged that women in New Zealand should be prepared for any emergency that might arise. If a review were taken of the number and accessibility of women available for such a scheme she said, each could be allotted to a station and have a definite job and place if need arose. Such a plan would utilise women's capabilities to the full and disclose what steps were necessary for further training.

Turning to her personal experiences as a ■ writer and traveller, Miss Scanlan spoke of her early articles written under a non-de-plume as a child and of her later work as a journalist dealing with cable news during the War. "I have always worked with and for men in business," she remarked, "and have never been conscious of any prejudice directed against me as a woman." Women in business could not expect to enjoy both the privileges of their sex and a high rate of salary. She had always found that if the business woman never intruded upon her men colleagues—"don't go in on them as a right," she advised —the men were glad to extend the privillege of welcome.

And during her travels, further as? pects of her life as a novelist were described by Miss Scanlan, who referred to herself as "one of the wandering New Zealanders who come home every few years." She travelled in England and abroad every summer, and returned to London in the winter to write a book based on the people and pieces she had seen. Miss Nissen, in proposing a vote of thanks to the speaker, said—Miss_ Scanlan always strikes the right not in addressing her audience and always told them something they wished to hear.