MODERN AMAZONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 June 1939, Page 11

MODERN AMAZONS

FINLAND’S HEFTY WOMEN. > ’V • Those who have been entrusted with the job of producing the regular bulletins for -the Finnish organising committee publicising the Olympic Games to be held in Helsinki, Finland, next year, and which are distributed -all over the world, are doing their job with great gusto. Besides being informative, the bulletins are bright and snappy; indeed, each time they seem to .grew brighter so that before very long there should not be so many people thinking that Helsinki is little more than a funny name or a. mere collection of log cabins and ice huts. The latest bulletin to arrive from Helsinki goes a long way towards banishing any such thoughts. Helsinki may be the. northernmost capital on earth, but the publicists give it an atmosphere and an individuality <of its own—a modern metropolis that is almost a creation of recent years and where the climate in the summer time can send the -thermometer soaring to dizzy heights. One of the brightest offerings in this bulletin, however, is headed “Finland’s Amazons.” It reads as follows: “The modern scientific approach to history has led scholars to the conclusion that the Amazons are a race only in the imaginations of ancient superstitious peoples. However, the Finns have reason to protest. There do exist equivalents of the Amazons actually in the flesh —if not elsewhere,, at least in Finland. Foreign tourists ■in the country inevitably express astonishment at the extent to which Finnish women enjoy equal footing with the men.

“Finland, it will be remembered, was the first European country to grant suffrage to women; and in this respect was ahead of both the United ‘States and Great Britain by a matter of decades. Already in 1870, moreover, women in Finland were participating in study at the State university, and by now there are more university students of the female sex in ratio to population there than anywhere else in the old -world. The field of medicine has been widely invaded by the sex.

“At least every other dentist is a woman, and not infrequently a beautj r . It is nearly impossible to get a shave or it haircut except at the disconcerring hands of an enchantress. -Street car and bus conductors often wear skirts. Clerks in banks, post offices, and other responsible institutions .are often adorned with permanent waves, powdered noses, and ruby lips, much to the embarrassment (or something) of visiting continentals.

“There are Finnish women with awe-inspiring lengthy academic titles attached to their, names. They have now and then beaten male competitors for professorships, not to speak of the poor male wretches failing of election to the National Diet because of the ‘unfair’ advantage of feminine curves in fetching votes. “Helsinki might be called the capital of Amazondom; for there, more conspicuously than elsewhere in Fiiiland, women can be seen carrying on trades and professions in other countries the exclusive birthright of males, all along the line down to carpenters and bricklayers. While no occupation is too dizzily high, neither is any too muscular and sweaty for the Finnish Amazon!”