WOMEN’S CLUB

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 239, 27 September 1930, Page 14

WOMEN’S CLUB

ADDRESS BY MISS E. ANDREWS DELEGATE FROM PAN-PACIFIC CONFERENCE. “A woman always has to do twice as well as a man to prove that she is his equal.” A very keenly interested audience heard the brief lecture given at the Women’s Club on Wednesday afternoon, tho meeting being arranged by the Hawke’s Bay Women Teachers' Association Miss Wellwood, Hawke’s Bay president of this association, and many teachers were present. Miss Andrews is Dominion president of the Women Teachers’ Association. and during her fortnight in New Zealand after returning from the Pan-Pacifio Conference in Honolulu, has addressed fifteen meetings. Mrs Gilbertson, vice-president of the Women’s Club, introduced the speaker. Some ideas taken from the address may be interesting to those unable to attend. Miss Andrews began by giving a brief resume of the aims of the Conference, and spoke of some of the delegates who struck her as outstanding personalities. OUTSTANDING WOMEN. Miss Sims, first assistant mistress of the Girls’ High School in Christchurch, was mentioned with admirs.tion by Miss Andrews, wiio said that New Zealand should be very proud of Miss Sims. The latter broke her wrist when on the journey to Honolulu, and in spite of having it twice re-set while at Honolulu, and though she suffered much pain from it, still site was chairwoman of the educational section and organised it at the Conference. Another woman who was, in Miss Andrews’ opinion, one of the foremost delegates was Dame Rachel Crowdy from England, who was chief of the social questions and opium traffic sections of the secretariat of the League of Nations Union, and was present at the Conference to give an account of the social activities of the League of Nations Union. Dame Rachel Crowdy, in a lecture at the Conference, said that the League bad been making a special study of child welfare in regard to illegitimacy, and its effect on child delinquency; also in regard to the effect on children of the cinema, and other important questions concerning youth. SOCIAL WORK. With regard to the opium traffic slio said that Eastern countries were the worst sufferers. A great dial of publicity was needed as regards the drug traffic, for people do not realise what the League of Nations is doing, and a national opinion must be created in countries such as China, to make them realise the evil going: on in their midst. There will be a conference in Geneva soon to decide the amount of drugs to be manufactured in the whole world. Dame Rachel Crowdy having been one of those who personally helped to investigate the traffic in women and children, was also an authority on that matter. There was a committee of investigation set up by the League which in different countries obtained its information from the various governments end also from the underworld itself.

It la not an old-wives’ tale about this traffic, for It does exist to an Incredible degree.

who came from China, Japan, and other countries, and was amused when one of them said, “I can’t understand the women of New Zealand they grow so big.” The close personal contact brought about by all the delegates working together at the Conference broke down the barriers built by race, creed and -colour. Japan was well represented. There are 82 million people in Japan, that country being about the size of New Zealand, which has only one and a half million. A CHANCE MISSED. The speaker said that in her opinion the Conference missed an opportunity, for though everyone worked side by side during the week, yet on Sundays all the followers of Christ, Buddha, and Confucius went to their places of worship, when possibly all might have met together and evolved a united service of some sort. A MESSAGE. This Conference teaches that there is a message for New Zealand women. Thev should do a little international thinking. We live in a happy land but we are apt to let the world slip by, and not do any thinking about the great international problems. We must cultivate an outward vision, not an Inward one. We must remember the word “Service,” and do our best to serve, or we are not doing our part in the world. A saying that has done untold harm is “Women’s place is the Home,” for many women who could do much to help in great public movements where women are needed, use that saying as a buffer to hide their laziness. We must serve or we are lui taking our part in the world. There is now a Pan-Pacific Women’s Association in New Zealand, arid we must help it and finance it. We have three, years in which to do that. “If the other nations can come to us with their problems and we can go to them with ours,” concluded the speaker, “the world will be a better place. New Zealanders should have vision, and look ahead through the decades and see the part the Pan-Pacific Women's Conference may play in the future.”

It may be accounted for partly by the low status of women in some countries and the low marriage ago, and also the amazingly low fines given as punishment for those who organise the traffic (perhaps a dollar fine). A very frank report prepared by the League of Nations was given to the Conference. The traffic is often organised by ordinary men who lack the vision to understand the evil they do. One such man was heard to say that tho League was “making it impossible for a man to earn a decent living.” Miss Mels, of Hollywood, gave another interesting lecture at the Conference. This delegate was head of a Casting Bureau in Hollywood. That is really a central agenev for engaging women and children for tho nicturos. Every studio in Hollywood that engages women and children must now have a toucher and a welfare officer attached to it, to safeguard the children's health and ensure their education. NATIONAL VIEWS. Speaking of the different viewpoints of the delegates of tho various centres, Miss Andrews said that the Japanese delegate could not understand tiie need for having old-age pensions in New Zealand, for in Japan it is the great privilege of the young to care for old people, and the different villages see that all the old people a.re well looked after. It is their pride to do so, a fact which hardly reflects credit on Non- Zealand’s point of view and its old-age pensions. A Chinese education delegate prodieted that although less than two per cent, of the Chinese are able to read and write now, that by 19511 there will be no illiteracy in China. There have Iron bonks printed reducing the Chinese characters used in writing to IGOI). This simplifies education there greatly, and adults are being taipdit in many ways now bv means of this new system. Miss Andrews noticed how much smaller most of the delegates were