BENCH OPEN TO WOMEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 19

BENCH OPEN TO WOMEN

There is nothing to stop women in the Public Service, after gaining the necessary experience and passing the necessary examinations, being appointed as Magistrates to any Court in New South Wales, states the Sydney "Sun."

"The only real stumbling-block seems to be marriage and the fact that this type of work apparently does not appeal to women in the service," said the Minister, Mr. Martin, when replying to the statement of Mrs. Jessie Street that women are excluded from appointment as Magistrates of Children's Courts.

Mrs. Street, who is the president of the United Associations of Women, said that the Child Welfare Bill should be amended in Parliament to make the appointment of women possible.

"The position is that I have no power to appoint outsiders as Magistrates, unless the Public Service Board reports that there is no'one in the service capable of filling the position," said Mr. Martin.

"Thus, women must be appointed as Magistrates from within the service— after they have qualified. First, they would have to pass examinations and become clerks of petty sessions, from the ranks of which Magistrates are selected.

CAREER VERSUS MARRIAGE

"But, as far as I can remember, no woman has ever become a C.P.5.," the Minister added. "The trouble in the service, as it is in most other services, governmental and private, is that women find marriage a more attractive career." A woman who, under modern conditions, follows a career or maintains a wide range of interests, outside marriage, often makes a more successful wife and mother than the purely ■"domestic" woman. Miss Zoe Benjamin (lecturer in child psychology in the Vniversity Tutorial Department) expressed this view recently in opposition to that of Dr. A. B. Vauttone, of Brisbane, who believes that women who work outside the home and the school lose their feminity. "As standards of education rise," she said, "many mothers cannot keep up with the' widening interests of their children. It must be remembered that many homes are dull places for their young people, who desire mental stimulus, which the essentially 'domestic' i mother, with all her fine qualities, can rarely give. Such a mother often loses her influence over her children as they | grow up."