THE MODERN WOMAN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 6 August 1928, Page 2

THE MODERN WOMAN

“No We likes, the modern woman, least of all the modern woman herself,” says' a woman contributor to the “Spectator.” ‘Let us consider the position of .the modern wemanfc-one who has received the best that higher education can give her, the sure recipe for a full, free, satisfied life. Supposing she does not dwindle shortly into a wife, what does she do? She may teach in a school; but in nine cases out of ten it is prudence, not inclination, that takes her there, for if she'hates anything more than the modern woman it is the modern schoolgirl. She may find; employment in business or in art or in one of the professions, but in practically every case she is forced to discover that her brain is inferior to a man’s brain, her physique not to be compared with his/her staying power deficient, her supply of ambition almost negligible, and everywhere, growing like blackberries, are ‘men, more efficient and better qualified. The community has very little need for her. For two kinds of work, women always have been exclusively and specially suited, but the higher education, being interested solely in making women like men, refuses to touch either of them. As a result the pay is so poor and conditions so hard, they offer formsof voluntary martyrdom rather than careers. I ‘mean, of course, hospital nursing and domestic service. And marriage, the escape, if it does not consist of a combination of nursing and domestic service with no pay and no conditions, yet involves constant dissipation of the energies upon social and domestic trivialities. . . We have entered the golden age of the female sex, from which we benefit as much as the child who painted gold for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, who was found stiff and dead on its swing at the end of the day. The age must run its destroying tragic course and the higher education of woman, a scaly, fire-breathing monster, gives daily proof o’f it 3 appalling vitality.”