SEX EQUALITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20560, 10 May 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

SEX EQUALITY.

BY MATANGA.

A MISTAKEN NIOTION<

In her Moth, and fortified by a few sandwiches and morsels of chocolate, Miss May Johnson has gob well on her way through the air from England to Australia. She is a capable sky-pilot, and something of a mechanic to boot. At the time of writing, there seems to be no good reason to doubt her ability to accomplish tho feat, even if she does not break tho time record of Bert Hinkler, an ambition acknowledged as part of her hope. Should she succeed in this hazardous solo flight, no doubt some ardent propounder of the theory of sex equality will say, " There! I told you so. What man has done woman can do, at least as well, perhaps a little better. A fig for the idea that men are lords of creation !" And so on, and so on, with all the usual recitals about the competition of the sexes and the iniquity of ancient female vassalage and modern reluctance to cede to woman all that somo of her sex demand for her. Miss Johnson, of course, is not a rara avis, and it can easily bo proved that in many pursuits women can do things as well as men can. For further examples, take Miss Tatsiana Diochenko, third mate of tho Russian steamer Sibier, who has her turn on tho bridge, and acts as purser in port, and the chief officer of the Russian training sailing-ship Tovarisch, who also is a woman. Such instances are as instructive as they are interesting, but do they provo sex equality ? This question, seriously put, calls for serious answer, and that answer, were the instances a millionfold more than they are, must bo a denial. Can things that are different bo logically described ns equal ? Difference is the essential element in sex, and to ignore so fundamental a fact is to try to build an argument without a foundation. Take the idea of difference away, and the meaning of sex is abstracted. The word is left without content. There are many ways of lighting n fire, all equally effective, but not, therefore, equal in all respects, or even comparable in all. A petrol-filled cigarette lighter is very different from a match: it may servo similarly one particular purpose, evon many purposes, but it functions in a vastly dissimilar way, and any attempt to argue otherwise would betoken an incapacity to reason about anything at all An Abiding Difference. In this age of the sex question it is well to face both the fact of sex difference and the impossibility of getting rid of it, to say nothing of the loss that would follow if "the difference were removed. However the difference came, whether by sudden fiat when male and female created He them" or by gradual evolution from a "common origin in an organism without sex, it exists; to deny it would be impious, and to try to accomplish its removal would be to seek a lower order of life than has been profitably instituted or developed.. Against the flood of wordy nonsense about sex equality that has been poured out of confused minds let tho frank words of a woman bo quoted. They are Virginia Woolf's. I do not believe that gifts, whether of mind or character, can be weighed like eugar and butter. . . All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality ag:ainst quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to tho private school stage of human existence, where there are " eides," and it is necessary for one 6ide to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a plat-, form and receive from the hands of the headmaster himself a highly-ornamental pot. Futile Contention. « " This pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality," is a flying in tho face of practical realities. As another woman, Sylvia Thompson, comments, " the question of equality, as between one sex and another, is not real." She dismisses the notion as a delusive red-herring, and condemns its myopic advocates as traitors to facts. " Let them ask themselves," she says, " what would be the advantage of this similarity-equality if such a consummation were possible ? Would either men, women or children benefit from such a condition ? A mere guessing at such similarity knocks the mind up against its absurdity. To admit that life itself depends on_ the physical dissimilarity of the sexes is to admit, in reason, the implications of their difference." And what, it may be asked further, are tho implications ? Surely, they are wrapped up in all that is meant by sex difference. Let it be granted that, there are many occupations in which women can perform service as capably as men. During tho war years some discoveries were made about this. They exist, too, in normal times. Their recital would be tedious repetition. For an extreme instance, not cited now as of high argumentative value, but by way of admitting to the utmost the truth of what some femininist campaigners advance, tako the sisters on a manless Canterbury farm who did vor years their own ploughing. Yet this does not prove that for all occupations there is inherent capacity of a similarity-equality sort. Are we to havo women blacksmiths, say, or iron-puddlers, not to mention slaughterwomcn ? Still less does it serve the purpose cf those who would have all avenues of service open on like terms to both sexes. To revert to the war days, it was found in munitions factories that soma tasks could bo performed more deftland speedily by women than by men. Very well: tho deduction argues different, not similar, capability, and points to a relative disqualification of one sex, in this instance the poor mule. It comes close to Tennyson's " and for the needle she. Woman's Special Sphere. The central implication of sex difference is thdt, in all things where her sex function is particularly thero is a woman's sphere, her own to fill and serve as no man can. Mothers' Day is once more suggestively upon us._ A little musing about what it means will reveal much, in relation to marriage and home. Men and women marry, in part, for what in some things they are like, but more for that in which thoy are unliko. Why do not tho feminist agitators plead for the setting up of homes by two men or two women ? It was a woman writer who mercifully reminded men lately that

man's incapacity for motherhood doo3 not reflect on men as a sex. The reminder was as just as it was kindly. . re " lated to this splendgur of function is a cyclic experience that womanhood apart in temperamental aptitudes and inaptitudes, in mental as well as physical qualities so inherent as to remain abidingly distinguishable. To discuss the sex rp ,e ;>- tion as if these things did not exist is worse than foolish. To counter the insidious error has not been easy. It has been espoused with a fino frenzy and hugged with the enthusiasm of an implacable vendetta. Waybe it must run its course ere it fall exhausted, though on the way it do much evil It is not so modern as its victims proudly claim-like the sufferers from a disease vaunting a high-sounding name. You will find it in Ovid s Metamorphoses," in the fable of Hermaphrodites. Wore it capable of becoming a reforming principle of social lifo, it would bung rum to what is of inestimable value. Happily, that eventual outcome -» inhibited by " chicls that winna ding, and of this the campaigners, whateyer justificat on th.-v may seem to havo in the long history of man's inhumanity to woman, must sooner or later take account.