SUPERFLUOUS WOMEN

Evening Star, Issue 19760, 10 January 1928, Page 8

SUPERFLUOUS WOMEN

ENGLISH WRITER'S VIEWS Taking y. light, perhaps “skittish” point of view, a woman writer in the London ‘Daily Telegraph’ discusses thus the overplus of women in the world:— “As long as 1 cun remember serious people have been exhorting us to attend to the fact that our country has more women than men. The lessons deduced from that are various . One, of course, is that women must he provided with opportunities of earning a living outside the profession of matrimony. At the other end of things, as it were, you find people arguing that to give women the vote must, mean the extinction or submersion of man. We have hitherto in a characteristically British way avoided extremes. We have given a great many women the vote, but not all. not the young ones. Wo have, theoretically, opened most of the professions 'and a number of occupations to women, but there has been no multiplication of opportunities for women to take the best positions. “Tar be it from me to suggest that this is evidence of the injustice to man. He is naturally a slow creature, bat he has probably been doing nis best .to adjust himself to a great change in conditions. Most men have now, whether they like’the prospect or not, got it firmly into their heads that our country has to provide for a permanent majority of women. I. don’t say they know how it is going to bo done. Very few, 1 suspect, have got beyond vague ideas of an increase of the number of women employed in the simpler routine tasks of commerce and industry. Some have notions of putting things right by exporting the superfluous females to countries where there are not enough to go round. But this is a big business. Women are a huge majority. Of people between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five, women arc 12 per cent, more numerous than men. “ The statistician from whom I borrow these sad figures. Professor Bowley, is full of consolation. ‘ Unmarried women,’ he is good enough to assure us, ‘ are not necessarily unwanted, any more than unmarried men. There are plenty of useful occupations for them and those who have _ been occupied’ {the phrase is not quite kind to the wives) ‘ will not bo the least contented of the vast numbers of elderly _ women whoso existence the statistician can foresee in the remote future.’ It is very likely. 1 don’t know that on such a question I should be inclined to take the opinion of an economist or statistician as more valuable than yours or mine. But that many women can attain to a state of content without marrying I am prepared to believe independently of the. authority of my professor. Certainly content is not of necessity the final result of marriage. I suppose if you and I were to enumerate the elderly women we knows single and married, we should find that, as far as anyone but themselves can judge, th' single arc quite as content as the married.

“ The professor slioukl remark, however, that this does not amount to a proof that single life suits a woman as well as marriage. We do not spend all our tirfie here below in being elderly. There' are earlier years. It is not enough to be happy when you are old. But I do not suggest that all women are alike. That everyone who is not a man wants to be married, and will always be unhappy unless she, is married, is a delusion born and bred of masculine vanity. We can all agree with the professor that to speak of the 12 per cent, margin of women as unwanted is confusion of terras and’ thought. Both men and women have other functions than the matrimonial to perform, and are wanted to take other positions than that of husband and wife.

“Still, however much you revolt against being treated as necessarily dependent on the other sex, you will agree that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is likely to be attained by the numerical equality of the sexes. That every woman would then marry is not, in the present state of civilisation, likely, and certainly not to be desired. But there would be reasonable opportunity for everyone to do as, she liked, which is not at present of-

fered. Is it ever likely to hep Most of us would have said that in an old country like ours there seems to be no chance of such a state of things. “But Professor Bowlcy declares that the future will not bo like the past. As. the years go by the majority of women over men will grow smaller by degrees and beautifully less till fortyseven years hence (it is a long time to wait) the excess of 12 per cent, will have dwindled to 1) per cent. This, i. take it, is to he the happy result of the decrease in infant mortality. Nature provides that the numbers of die sexes bom should be roughly equal. The boy baby has been found by the civilised mother more difficult to rear, and that is the chief cause of the superlluity of women. Now 7 that the probability of every baby growing up is so much greater we may expect that the intentions of Nature in the numbers of men and women will be realised.

What will happen in the year 1971, wdiat the world will then be like, are matters in which you and I may not be personally involved. But it is pleasant to think of our grandchildren living in a country not very much more populous, says the statistician, than it is now, but with just as many boys as girls. 1 cannot doubt that it will be good for the boys. 1 wonder whether the'girls will make the best of their opportunities. Yet more do J wonder whether in a nation thus equitably divided the progress which has been made in the employment of women in occupations outside matrimony will bo continued. It is most disturbing to feci, the surge of a suspicion that the future is not going to . approve of everything we have been doing, and may even revert to the manners and customs of the shameful past.”