GOOD “STICKERS”

Evening Star, Issue 22638, 3 May 1937, Page 1

GOOD “STICKERS”

WOMEN IN CIVIL SERVICE In their efforts to capture the glittering prizes of Whitehall women have proved themselves to be “ stickers,” states an English journal. After five successive years of failure to win even a single place in the world’s hardest examination for administrative posts in the Civil Service, they scored a record success, four women securing places. In the present-day paper, in which questions are put on contemporary subjects (social, economic, and political) and where effective and skilful exposition is rewarded, one of them scored 83 marks out of the maximum of 100. Only one man with 86 marks did better. In examinations of a lower standard women have always more than held their own against men, but it was realised that unless they were able to capture a fair proportion of the “ seats of the mighty ” in Whitehall .the status of women in the Civil Service would be an inferior one.

Their peak year was 1925, when they were first admitted and when they won outright three places with 27 candidates. Whitehall was more shaken by this feminine raid on its masculine preserves than by any enemy raid of the war. Pitted against the elite of Oxford and Cambridge—all honours men—• it had been confidently believed that no woman could possibly succeed in this competition. Women’s sensational success makes it certain that we shall one day see a woman the permanent head of the Ministry of Labour or the Ministry of Health, or even in charge of the national housekeeping at the Treasury itself.