FEMININE UTOPIA

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Issue 4753, 1 October 1935, Page 8

FEMININE UTOPIA

o WHERE WIFE IS HEAD OF THE HOUSE. Modern women congratulate themselves that they live in more enlightened times than their grandmothers and great-grandmothers. With the emancipation of women has come greater freedom and independence until at present, there are very few professions, including science, medicine and law, which do not include women in ever-increasing numbers, states an Australian writer. To learn that we are actually behind the times, compared to a Mongolian race called the Garos, is somewhat disconcerting. Travellers to this distant part of China tell us that the wife is really the head of the house, having more power and influence than mere man. Sh'e it is who owns the house and property. She retains her maiden name when she marries, and passes it on to her daughters. The sons only take the father's surname. When they travel, the woman always carries the luggage. All important business connected with their farms is transacted by the women. Reapers for harvest time are engaged by them, and they then go out into the fields and work alongside them. In this feminine Utopia, a man cannot inherit his parents' property —it all goes to the daughter. The son, if he wishes to become wealthy, must seek the daughter of a wealthy home, and only by marrying her, and sharing her fortune, ca'n he inherit wealth and property. Widows generally re-marry, and that is where the complications come in. A widow, of perhaps middle age, marries a man, that widow has a daughter, and should the mother die, all the property goes to her. Therefore, to make sure of the financial situation, the gallant suitor marries both the widow and her daughter, and then he feels fairly safe. A record, even to this paradoxical situation was made recently when the happy bridegroom married not only the widow, but her daughter and her grand-daughter as well so that the monetary marriage settlement might be not only doubly, but trebly safe.