WOMEN CRITICISED

Evening Star, Issue 19840, 13 April 1928, Page 8

WOMEN CRITICISED

SPORTING GIRLS A MISTAKE __—- i i, fir Meytlck Booth, writing in the .• hu'dish Review,’ denies the legend of the weak, sentimental \ ictonan woman and her supposed immeasurable infcnority as compared with the robust women of the present day. an old lady who died about ten years ;i rr o . In girlhood she had mastered French, Latin, and Greek, and had acJSSd • domestic training far superior to that of most of the modern girls. She brought up oil a small income her family of eight children, all of 'vhom did well, and two brilliantly, bhh the help of one servant she ran the_ whole household and looked alter an invalid husband. She was resolute and vigorous, and at the age ot eighty-lour years she was still full ot intellectual life and fire. Such instances could be multiplied by the hundred, according to Dr Booth; and he submits that the entire conception of the modern girl as a person of exceptional powers comparer! with her grandmother is a pure myth. In the pursuit of athletics the pre-sent-day girls can score a few points over the women of the Victorian era; hut is it in the least important (asks Dr Booth) that girls should excel in athletics? It does not make them ideal mothers for the future children of England as is often stated. Ihe evidence ; points in quite another direction. Questions have been asked in Parliament concerning the reason for the continued serious mortality of women in childbirth. The deaths per thousand births have risen from 3.8 in 1917 to 4.1 in 1926. Manv of the foremost medical authorities have expressed the opinion that the typical modern woman, the product of the masculinised girls schools, is strikingly unfitted for maternity, There is a.very strong case to he made out for the view that the' whole training of the modern girl, 'directed towards fitting her for economic independence along masculine lines, tends powerfully to unfit her for the racial task. England got on very well indeed without sporting women. She cannot get on at all without home'building women. Perhaps the Battle cf Waterloo was won because the Duke of Wellington’s mother kept away from the playing field. What is a sign of strength m a man may bo a symptom of weakness in a woman. Man’s primary function, says 3>r Booth, is to create food and wealth for the community; while woman’s primary function is to bear and rear the children of the community. Against true sex equality he has nothing to say; but there is a very dangerous and misleading idea of equality which consists in believing that whatever can be don© by men can and should be don© by women. This is pernicious nonsense. A woman Joses nothing of her value and dignity by admitting that there are departments of life which Nature has delegated to man, as every man will admit that ho is quite unfitted for the hundred and one tasks connected with maternity or with nursing, for winch women are admirably adapted. In inidustry we are caught in a vicious circle. The more girls are trained to compete with and undercut men, the more difficult becomes home life and marriage jfor the men of the nation, and thus the Snore girls, are driven into celibate