NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17110, 15 March 1919, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

HEALTH OF WOMEN WORKERS.

The care of women workers has presented unusual difficulties to the British authorities. The sudden inmsh of female labour wss not foreseen, and arrangements were inadequate. Conditions of work were accepted by applicants without question, and without complaint, which, if continued, would have been ultimately disastrous to health. It was particularly necessary to protect and safeguard the possible mothors, lest irreparable injury should be done to mind and bodily health in this generation and the next. The importance of the office of motherhood would alone have justified an inquiry by a committee into the health of munition workers. Equally on the other hand, the committee appreciated the exceptional importance of women's labour in tho emergency, and was most unwilling to suggest the imposition of conditions that would possibly embarrass employers or restrict tho valuable contribution female workers so willingly offered. The members confined themselves to the examination and discussion of certain urgent factors in the general control, and record their satisfaction " that the women and girls employed at these factories are ac a whole, bearing: the strain of their munition work remarkably welL" This conclusion is riot a vague expression of opinion; it a based on two medical inquiries that have been prosecuted with some care, and separated by a considerable interval of time. For obvious reasons these investigations are not so thorough and complete as the authorities would have wished, yet they probably represent the average conditions, and this view is supported t»y the general agreement found between these independent inquiries. Up to the present, there has been no marked break-down in the health of women in industry, but this statement is qualified by the apprehension that " many women are only able to keep working by a total abandonment of all recreation or social intercourse."