COUNTRY WOMEN SHOULD SHOW LESS APATHY, SAYS W.D.F.F. PRESIDENT

Evening Star, Issue 26154, 16 July 1947, Page 8

COUNTRY WOMEN SHOULD SHOW LESS APATHY, SAYS W.D.F.F. PRESIDENT

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, July 15. A challenge to members to concern themselves more with important problems affecting women to-day was issued by Mrs W. Elliott (Otago), Dominion president of the Women’s Division of the Federated Farmers, at the official opening of the division's Dominion conference to-night. Women needed to throw off their apathy and become much more active in future, she said.

“ I am forced to believe that our apathy is created because of fear that our actions will be misconstrued and we will be declared party political,” she stated. “ Our organisation is nonparty political.•- It is a national organisation. I consider we are _ failing in our duty to each other if we do not interest ourselves in these questions and use our united efforts to influence the powers that be to rectify the existing conditions that are causing us deep concern. Domestic help, in country homes was of much more , serious concern than met the eye, Mrs Elliott said. The primary producers of New Zealand were the backbone of tlid national prosperity till it could be proved otherwise. The country women of the Dominion were anxious and prepared to do their share for national prosperity, but they . were not going to attempt 1 tasks that were fast approaching a stage beyond their physical ability. _ _ The difficulty of getting domestic help in the country, especially where there were small children, was making it impossible to maintain, let alone increase, primary production. The domestic workers being brought from overseas would not help the country women, who could not offer the inducements of the city, with its 40-hour week and ever-increasing enticements. The forced closing of many private nursing homes and the incouveniences facing prospective patients were other matters for concern, the President said. A maternity hospital should be a building apart—not a ward in a general hospital. “ I have been told of patients being transferred, one day after delivery, of a child, t p another hospital 30 miles distant,” she said. “ This is a wicked disgrace. Why should the mothers of our race have to submit to this treatment? If we are prepared to , accept this sort of thing when it' is meted out to some of. our women we are not worthy of our place in a women’s organisation.” The shortage of electricity was something else to consider, Mrs Elliott said. It was bringing acute discomfort ; to maiiy country women who depended entirely on electricity for cooking aiid water heating.