THIS "PAMPERED SEX"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21716, 3 February 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

THIS "PAMPERED SEX"

WOMEN IN INDUSTRY THE WAGE-EARNING PROBLEM " Englishwomen are pampered by the law and by their menfolk," is the recent challenge issued by the new 1933 Men's Association, which goes on to denand that the sexes should be treated equally. "An office jn which I work is staffed entirely by women," says one woman writer, in commenting on the injustice of the attitude of many men toward this question. " From the woman earning £3OO a year down to the office girl at 15s a week, every single woman gives up the whole or her salary to help to support some household. Among my women friend who are wage-earners, I cannot think of one who is not educating some nephew or niece, or providing for at least one parent, or in some way contributing a necessary sum of money to keep a home together. " Yet men are supposed to need more food than women. This is really what is at the back of all this agitation against woman. She demands the right to eat and to earn the money with which to buy food. " I have never come across the man who is anxious to deprive the charwoman of her job. Eager to be fair to men, in spite of the fact that they have not always been fair to me, I once offered a man my charwoman's job. He rejected it with contumely. He said the work was 'too hard for the pay offered.' He said it was woman's work." But although it is impossible to question the right to earn of the woman who is dependent on her own exertions for a means of livelihood for herself or others, on the other hand it is undoubtedly true that if all the women who did "not need to work would retire, a very large number of men would cease to be on the " dole " in various parts of the world, or to live a life of enforced and deteriorating leisure.