WOMEN AND WORK

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11497, 18 April 1923, Page 7

WOMEN AND WORK

i - # - -.' THE FINANCIAL FACTOR. The subject of payment for women’s work in the home comes more and more to the front. Hie lack of scientific application' to house work has recently been noted. "I do nob know of any occupation that is attended with so modi illhealth agd disability as the occupation of the mother of a family. Kitchen neurasthenia has. just as much effect in retarding thp progress of the nation as any other occupational disease,” said Dr. Cumpeton, Federal Di-rector-General of Health, at the PuMio Health Association Conference. In hundreds of thousands of homes women are conscientiously doing their worn monotonously, mechanically, wasteful of energy and tune, who, if they could once realise their work as a business, would train themselves to do.it with the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of fatigue (states ‘F G” in the “Sydney Morning Heiald”). They go through their work day after day in the same old way, doing one thing and thinking about the next task or* WiMStfiiflg qtfitfe‘"Onoannected with their work—the very surest way of growing tired. The domestic woman is always doing i-wo things at once, possibly three. Until women are systematically trained for the business of- the mother of a family they will find it one of the hardest things in the world to do and think of one thing at a time It can be done. With the spectre of neurasthenia and the lunatic asylum it has to be done. This question of morion saving is an important one in the business of heme-making. How many of us- ever sit down and think what an unnecessary number of steps and morions she might save in a day’s work, and yet do it more efficiently? 'We could save ourselves ah immense amount of fatigue if we made ourselves do our work with the leagt number of steps and the fewest movements, never going over the same ground twice if we can possibly avoid it. Scientific management makes an art of all work. Having disciplined ourselves to the carrying out of a rigid plan of our day’s work, and the scientific use of our tools, it is as important to remember that “to break step occasionally is quite as necessary to “keeping fit” as the scientific use ot the muscles. Women sicken by an over-conscientious sense of duty. 1? something pleasant turns up let tho house for an occasional once take care of itself. Let the man get his dinner out, and the children fend for themselves. Train them to think that such little breaks in the even tenor of the household way is your just right, and that it k their duty to help you to get it. even if they have to be uncomfortable.

Having shaped the domestic course into a business, it has to be remembered that a business gives payment for erviees rendered. The general failure to remember this point is one of tbe causes of the kitchen neurasthenia which is helping to fill our mental hospitals. As one writer recently put ■t. "Man is a parasite, living on services for which m makes no equivalent return.” The hardest work 1 is sweetened by tho knowledge that it is bringing in a definite return that is all one’s own to do as one likes with. The woman who works year in and year our without that reward is liable to the hopelessness that results in jhff kitchen neurasthenia.