WOMAN POWER

Evening Star, Issue 23421, 11 November 1939, Page 17

WOMAN POWER

No more interesting evidence of the distance that women have travelled in avocations outside the home in the period between the outbreak of the last Great War and the present emergency could be imagined than is to be found in the diversity of occupations represented in the records that are being compiled from the women’s voluntary national register forms in Australia, states the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald.’ They range from camouflaged artists to chiropodists, from psychologists to kindergartners, from interpreters to cipherers and map tracers, from pathologists to photographers, from radio inspectors to comptometer operators, from transport drivers to veterinary scientists.

While in point of numbers the cooks still outdo the auxiliary air force and the comforts fund workers outnumber radiologists, the variety of the fields of service in which our women are anxious to' employ themselves provides interesting commentary not only upon their aspirations, but upon their qualifications.

The Federal authorities responsible for compiling this national register of the woman power oh Australia are anxious that every woman should sign and return as soon as possible the yellow registration forms, which are obtainable from all the major women’s organisations, at municipal and other local government'offices, and from the headquarters of the Council of the Women’s Voluntary National 11 e-

gister, ninth floor Commonwealth Bank Buildings, Castlereagh street. SEVEN MAIN CLASSES, The register is divided into seven main classes, each of which has its subdivisions. Class A is concerned with the provision of comforts for combatants, which include food, clothing, and so on, and the qualifications include “ correspondence, typewriting, storing and packing, invoicing, and transport detail.” Class B covers service in hostels, rest homes, reading rooms, and coffee stalls, and includes the capacity and experience to enrol and manage staffs. Class C is concerned with the provision and organisation of entertainment for bodies of troops in camps, depots, and elsewhere. The transport and motor driving section embodied in class 1) involves, in the first place, the provision of voluntary transport from persons willing to lend cars for specific occasions or periods, and, secondly, of a list of qualified motor drivers and motor cyclists willing to place themselves at the disposal of the authorities. Service under class E for air raid precautions and State national emergencies will be required in municipalities and shires, and it includes women for air raid wardens, first aid posts, ambulance drivers and attendants, cooks, etc. The special services under class r include censorship, maps and plans, interpreters. camouflage artists, _ cypherers, scientists, and other specialists.

Class G covers general service, local or elsewhere, and has been divided into seven subdivisions, including office workers (accountants, clerks, typists, telephonists, etc.), workers in manufacturing processes (food, condiments, soap, etc.), agricultural and horticultural workers, cooks, waitresses, laundresses, and workers in printing, publishing, and bookbinding establishments, and paper and bag factories. Nurses from both metropolitan and country centres are enrolling mainly through the Australian Trained Nurses’, Association, either for the Australian Army Nursing Service Corps or for work in civil hospitals. Another division, that of the agricultural and horticultural workers, is being compiled through the Country Women’s Association and the Agricultural Bureaux. PREPARED TO FACE LIFE. Apart from this matter of registration in terms of preparation for war, there is no doubt that, tragic as the immediate circumstances may be, as a result of the call to prepare a great many women will bo the better prepared to face life in terms of peace or war. There are hundreds of women who have been and will be attending first aid and homo nursing classes who will bo the better equipped to face accident or sickness emergencies in their own homes or outside them. There are hundreds of women attending cookery classes which will leave them with a much better knowledge of food values, and possibly food hygiene, than they

possessed hitherto. There are the woman who have learnt to drive cars or have made the acquaintance for the first time of the internal complexities of their own cars who would hitherto have been ill-equipped to deal with the slightest emergency on the road. There are the girls who have been studying signalling, aeronautical engineering, and so on, which, although it might not in itself serve any practical purpose, will have developed their mechanical bent to a generally useful degree.