Women’s Progress

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 133, 8 June 1935, Page 14

Women’s Progress

TIRED OF TOO MUCH SUCCESS Dr Duncan, of Sydney University, lecturer to tutorial classes, lias struck a new and important' note, which will more than echo round the world( says t'ho correspondent of the Melbourne Age), for it will probably bo the beginning of a new social idea or the foundation of a new philosophy on an original basis. 110 has been examining the position of women since they started their agitation for emancipation—politically and socially—in 1878, and what they have done with their freedom. Dr Duncan’s address is easily the most scholarly and well-intentioned that has been delivered in Sydney for some time, and it touches a subject that must have a profound meaning for tho world, and particularly women. Summed up briefly, it decides (and he produces the evidence of many thoughtful' women) that women have gone further than they were reasonably expected to go on the wave of enthusiasm which brought in emancipation. They have not only set out to prove their equality with men, but they have now invaded tho sphere of

man "with such success that they have displaced him in some directions. Some are bent under the feminist movement at wholly displacing him. They have taken on a task of which they are tiring, aud there is only ono thing for it, and that is rctroat. If it goes on, it will become an established fact that women will wholly .change place with man and become the breadwinner of the family. From the evidence which Dr Duncan quotes thero is little doubt that many thoughtful women recogniso the position in which women havo entangled themselves, and their observations show that they are tired of it, and would willingly get back to what the emancipists used to call “slavery," to free themselves from a much serverer task and burden which lias been placed upon them. The movement to rightabout turn will come sooner or later, and Dr Duncan has sounded the first note of retreat.