WOMEN AND THE WAR.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLII, Issue 12823, 15 April 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

WOMEN AND THE WAR.

INTEREST* AND CONDITIONS AFFECTED. An article on "War Relief and War Service." bv Mrs M. G. Fawcett, in the Quarterly Review (London), shows how Great Britain's civilian population has contributed in various ways to the nation's efficiency. In particular, the article points out that woman's professional and industrial status has been altered more or less permanently by the demands of the hour, and that her capacity in many lines of effort is now lecGgmsed as never before. In the new work in which women have been engaged they have shown a. Ijjo-b. degree, of industrial efficiency, not merely in the mechanical feeding_of automatic machines, but in work which requires technical skill of a high order. Mrs Fawcett quotes from the wellknown technical journal. The Engineer, a paragraph offering proof that women can and do require a high standard *of skill and efficiency: '■We need only mention one case, but it will appeal 'to every mechanical engineer. In a certain screwing operation it customary, before the employment of women, to rough the thread out with the tool and then to finish it off with taps. Some trouble having arisen owing to the wearing of the taps, the women of their own, initiative did away with the second operation and are now accurately_chasing the threads to gauge with the tool alone. This is work of which any mechanic might feel proud In fact it may be stated -with absolute truth that "women have shown themselves perfectly capable of performing operations which hitherto have been exclusively carried out by men." It is not likely that after this experience of women's industrial efficiency thev will bo excluded from the skilled trade after the war. The practical problem will be to raise their industrial status without lowering the industrial status of the men. Mrs Fa.wcett laments the fact that at present women have hot only been excluded from what are known as men's trades, but also in a large degree from what are universally recognised as women's trades, sucfi. as catering, house-cleaning, and cooking. The disgraceful ■waste' which has characterised the administration; of the training camps for soldiers is largely attributed by Mrs Fawcett to the fact that "women have not been. I put to do their own job."