WOMEN IN POLITICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20174, 7 February 1929, Page 5

WOMEN IN POLITICS.

WHEN THEY ENTER CABINET.

I have seen it suggested that England will one day be governed by an all-woman Cabinet. Presumably the idea comes from the realisation that women now vote on level terms with men, and, in tho aggregate, slightly outnumber men, writes Viscountess Rhondda in a London daily.

I do not wish to suggest that a carefully trained and selected all-woman Cabinet could not govern as well as a carefully trained and chosen all-men Cabinet and better than most average Cabinets, many of whoso members are not, in fact, selected primarily on account of their efficiencv.

Still, the idea of an all-woman Cabinet attracts me as little as does an ali-man Cabinet If it were deliberately selected on account of its sex it would be the negation of the vital principle for which women have fought and still are fighting —the fundamental principle of equality. It is often said by those who dislike the idea of women Cabinet Ministers, that women can never level up with men in the larger action of iife, because women are softer in fibre, too compassionate, slipshod, made over-sentimenta! by the maternal instinct for the rough business of holding their own with men and in the battle of life and affairs.

But this is chiefly a matter of education and experience owing to the way girls are usually brought up. Characterforming ill youth is no less effective with girls than with boys. i The old generalisations like "Woman's place is in the home" die hard. But the post-war generation are realising more and more thai intelligent and able women can happily and successfully combine the work they are fitted for with marriage and the duties of motherhood; that they can fit marriage into their lives, as men have always done, and not necessarily sacrifice either work to marriage or marriage to work. Eventually we shall cut through the tangle of confused thought and obsolete tradition, and get this business of work and marriage as it relates to women straightened out. But first women will have to enter the Government. Inevitably, I suppose, there will be early discussions on the sort of post women ought to have in the Cabinet. One foresees this sort of thing: "They'll give Mrs. So-and-So the Home Office, I expect. She wouldn't do at the Foreign Office —a man's job, that. So is the Treasury. Women are never any good at finance. But a woman might not be bad at tlie Ministry of Agriculture. Quite a lot of women go in for farming and cattle-breeding these days. A woman Minister of Health might not be bad, either. Women have a flair for nursing and child welfare" and so so. I fear this will be the first reaction when women enter the Cabinet. But it will pass, and must pass. I doubt whether these implied fundamental differences between the masculine and feminine brain exist I doubt even, all things being equal, if the difference in basic character is as great as is generally supposed. • -' Naturally, there will always be dependent women, and women who prefer sex privilege to isex equality. But this is not a thing peculiar to women. It is not a sex phenomenon. As Mr. Bernard Shaw reminded us recently, the war showed that there are men who are just as willing to b? lrept by women as any women ever were iby men. A question of the individual, not of sex. Bat I foresee that before a Prime Minister will be able to pick women for his Cabinet as freely as he picks men, society will have to let go its immemorial view of women as sex incarnate, and accept them as individuals first and women afterwards.