THE WEAKER PARTNER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16567, 3 June 1914, Page 5

THE WEAKER PARTNER.

REMUNERATION FOR WOMEN WORKERS. PLEA FOR MORE SYSTEMATIC BASIS. (By P.J.F.) I. There is one statement which never fails to bo brought forward, either explicitly or in a veiled form, in answer to appeals for a fairer and more systematic basis of remuneration for women workers. It is something like this: "'Women have no right to compete with men in professions and trades; then- .place is. in the homo, and their physical and mental equipment arc alike unequal to work other than domestic!. If they would recognise and accept this limitation ,wo should hear no more of a woman's wage question—in fact, there is. properly speaking, no such question." Here follows, in the worst cases, a prean of praise of the household virtues and duties, of the'joy and sanctity of motherhood, etc. Tho,statement quoted al>ove, or something akin to it, is reiterated on all sides by purveyors of easy generalisations, who would have us believe it the key to tho wholo difficulty. It finds allies in tho born Tories of every class, and appears in various guisos, from the doubtfullv scientific treatise of Sir Almroth Vi right, and the negative utterances of the' Society for Opposing Woman Suffrage, right down to the man in the street, who thinks he has said the last word when he shouts, " Go home and mind the baby I" It is not to be supposed that the rank and file of shallow thinkers will readily relinquish this pocket-solution of the whole troublous question. None the less, the inherited notion that women can in future, as formerly, be arbitrarily restricted to the work their homes afford them, can bo shown to bo not only false fundamentally but also untenable in face of the actual, conditions. Of these conditions the ono that, so to speak, "leaps to the eye" of .even the most casual onlooker is the presence in the community of superfluous women, a large number of whom are forced to earn their own living. In this country the actual numerical' preponderance of women over men is"n+ very considerable: but to the actual surplus must be added a number corresponding to those men who. from inKuffirV' nt iriPflllQ m<imi or TnnaliVi. «f

employment, preference, or other cause, remain unmarried. Thero are, further, the women wlio. though marrying eventually, do paid work for ten or twelve years previously, and so represent a factor, perhaps a more important one than is generally recognised. Those in agreement with the generalisation we are attempting to confute would he consistent only were they to attempt some sort of penalising of the single state, tsinee every wilful bachelor may bo said to bs thwarting a potential hon«ewife. But curiously enough, we find that the only real tax for ceiiTKicy is levied on women alone. This is

done through the employer, who pavs relatively smaller wages to his female employee, on tho rather paradoxical grounds that she has properly no right to be there. I> : d the same employer carry his regard for social order to the point of increasing the wages of those ! male employees having large families I to support, we might begin to believe in the sincerity of his reasoning. My attitude on this point is not intended to imply a, low estimate of . tho value of the home-maker—l bej lieve her office to be. even in unfavourable conditions, -tho happiest and most preferable for tho great bulk cf normally constituted women. We owe our continued presence on the planet to the fact that it is so. But there is a type of man and woman who, while constantly urging the married state as the cure-all for certain social evils, and inveighing against the individual woman worker (who generally cannot help herself), do less than nothing to encourage that understanding of modern social anomalies which alone may. help us to a solution. They seem to think that the unmarried woman, when not a subject for censure, is bast passed over as a rather poor joke (they generally commend the recherche Chinese custom of disposing of surplus female infants at birth as the only practical way out of the difficulty), while thev dismiss the offensive reality of ' prostitution as simply " necessary." or | "natural." ("Natural," inonosense.it . is, as the inevitable outcome of tho common acceptance of a different moral standard for each sex). When Iwe look dispassionately at the free j training afforded girls in tho State schools, and realise how little special attention has been given them qua women-to-bc as differing from men-to-bo, we are put in mind of the midVictorian poet. " Woman is the lesser Man." Jiever was a more egregious fallacy. The human species does not ! consist of a noble beast called Man,

encumbered by a regrettable and unnecessary side-product called Woman; en the contrary, humanity ha« its being in two ae\ss, each in a sense incomplete without the other; so that to regard Woman as a clumsy copy of Man, as it were. "Man marred in the making," is obviously not correct. Ye l . this idea in traceable in tho tendency to regard men as human, and women as sex; tho latter are, in fact, often referred to as simply " the sex"— though it is only fair to admit that that term is becoming much less used. In speaking of the facilities afforded to girls by our system. I am not-over- . looking tho very laudable enterprise j of tho "hostel" description,; hut these l establishments, not being free, lie rather outside our argument. Training on much the same lines is given in the free day-classes at the Technical Colleges, and theso are in themselves wholly desirable—ono might even go so far as to make at least a short course of domestic training compulsory for girls leaving school. But what I want to point out is, that in giving such prominence as wo do to the domestic side, we strengthen the "specialising'' tendency, which is a stumbling-block in tlie solution of women's problems. Many people like to think that women have a passion for housework —or at least should have. How mue.i they really dislike it (when not their own) may be inferred from a comparison of the wages now commanded by domestic servants with those commanded hv tho often raoro highly qual »wl woman workers in other trades ana professions. Tho high rate now prevalent for the former has, of tonne, its reason in the great excess ot tlie demand over the supply. Tho average porson is frequently to he beard railing at the modern young woman toi preferring work in shops .and G & c %™ work in other people's houses. »«v is.this reasonable?. Is the tion to earn our living i" .«« w ']> least displeasing to us ft 9 aal,n ' o lie found exclusively among woman r Surely not. If we wish to induce women to work more in **? l [:.jK than, they do at presefto, .wrfllwswstudy must be devoted to the tion of the conditions.; sitrwn dU'K home-life, so that their enojen will wu naturally on that class ot work tn preference to all others. 1 fcopo 1« ly to show that thwo ore reasons wny it i s unlikely that women wi! .ever again ho able to ppood wo« ihan A part of their working life m the W charge of domestic duties. I (To bo continued.)