WOMEN AND TAXATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21612, 6 April 1932, Page 5

WOMEN AND TAXATION

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —On the subject of the proposed taxation of women workers for the unemployment fund I have noticed various opinions recently in your paper, one striking me especially as most unfair and selfish in the extreme. Women, taking them as a sex,, have most decidedly annexed men’s positions in business circles and elsewhere during the past few years, and are still doing so; for the period of the waiting was, of course, unavoidable. Men, generally speaking, when in a position to do so, marry and found a home and are of some use to the age and country they live in. The modern woman, in a similar position, prefers to keep up a bachelor flat and entertain her social circle at bridge parties, etc., and perhaps save up for her long-deferred retirement from her business life. These women should be only too glad to help their country in its present state of depression by playing the game (as men do) and paying towards the fund, whatever sum may seem necessary to the men they expect to straighten out the financial problem. Where do the women in good positions or with small incomes think the money is coming from if everyone does not play his or her part in helping to provide iff Perhaps they consider their representatives in Parliament should perform miracles. Unfortunately, it is not the age of miraculous happenings. Kight-minded women, workers, or people

of leisure should be willing to help in this matter. Someone said “ The ago of chivalrj is past.” Why so? Because women have consistently taken men’s work and play—is there even a game they are leaving tc the menfolk —and it is now time for them to be their equals in other matters, not quite so pleasant, perhaps, but still very necessary, such as helping with the Unemployment Fund. —I am, etc., Widow Woman Worker.