WOMEN’S WRONGS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22628, 20 July 1935, Page 18

WOMEN’S WRONGS

TO THE EDITOR Sir, —Like some of your other correspondents, I would like to see, not only a few women in Parliament, but many of them. W T hy should we have to vote for men to go'up to Wellington and assist in making laws to favour their own sex. «Topsy Turvy ” suggests that we also vote women into hospital boards, etc., but she forgets that few women are ratepayers. The working woman, of course, cannot buy properto on the hopeless women’s wage, and "the married woman has no say in the roof over her head. Moreover, the “ king of the castle can turn her out any time, homeless and penniless, through the safe and sure method of persistent cruelty. Whether she has woAed one year or twenty years for the slave's wage makes no difference whatever. Is it any wonder that defaulters are increasing in number when they meet with such amazing leniency? It is not right that the already overburdened public. should be made, by means of hospital board taxation and “ self denial,” to keep this ever-increasing army of unwanted wives and children. Yet" this goes on, while defaulters gad around the country, very often posing as single men. and having a good time generally. Women and girls, because of starvation wages, are being_ driven into unsuitable marriages for a living. Did our beloved lady M.P.. Mrs M'Combs. speak the truth when she asserted that the way women were being treated in New Zealand was nothing short of scandalous?' If political parties do not nominate women candidates to stand at the general election then the Women s National Council should come forward and supply, a few. Let us forget party politics and voje for women. Think of the treatment meted out to women in Germany and Italy. If any woman, when given the opportunity, does .not vote for one of her own sex, she deserves to suffer from the effects of being driven mtofhe furthest depths of the slavery from which we are still struggling to emerge, and into which, the selfish male, would' like to force ns back. • . , „ , i Let us read once again Longfellow s “Psalm of Life,” and heed the poets admonition, “Be not like dumb driven cattle.” —1- am, etc., ■ Anti-favouritism. North Otago, July 18.