NEW CAREERS FOR WOMEN

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1929, Page 11

NEW CAREERS FOR WOMEN

WHY NOT IN THE AIR?

OPPORTUNITIES IN DOMINIONS.

; The fact that a British woman explorer, Miss Caton-Thompson, has been engaged by the British Association and the Rhodesian Government to make an aerial sufvey of th© legendary site of King Solomon’s Mines, in South Rhodesia, is extraordinarily interesting to anyone who believes that woman’s future work may be up in the air as well as on the ground, says an English paper. It is possible that the parents of. to-day, whose sons and daughters are of school age, have never thought of civil aviation as a career for their sons . and daughters. Very often the ' budding flier is already trained in something that would make great strides if aviation was applied to it. Miss CatonThompson’s exploration by air is a case in point, as she.is accompanied by two other women, both experts. In Canada to-day aeroplanes are in general use for paying treaty money to Indians on remote reservations, boundary survey and patrol, fishery protection, most branches of forestry, including the spraying of trees for pine blight. Then they are used for survey and repair of telegraph lines, sowing rice in Manitoba marshes, carrying ore from the mines, not forgetting gold from Red Lake and the Hollinger Mine. They are employed for taking passengers and freight to mining camps, observing the state of the ice in Hudson Bay, prospecting for new railway lines, and a host of other useful activities, including research into the prevalence of rust. in wheat.

Opportunities in Australia are likewise many, especially for the woman with medical training, for Australia was the. first great continent to institute an aerial medical service. In fact, as Mamie Royden said the other day, “If you live in the backblocks, you summon ■ your doctor by wireless, and he arrives at your front gate by aeroplane.” Apart from semi-skilled employment in aircraft factories, there is an evorwidening field in meteorology in every country in the world for the girl with a science degree and the research type of mind, for what we do not know about controlling the weather or flying purposes will take about a century to discover. At present we are satisfied if we-merely forecast it accurately, but man —or woman—should know better than that in time. Aeroplanes have been used, with some success, in the new science of rain-making, chiefly in the West.

A woman surveyor could acquire experience from, an aviation angle, a gin could learn map-making from the air, and a woman already skilled in photography could study aerial photography. Girls of the future trained in an agricultural college, especially in a Canadian one, might become forestry observers. Anyone could spot a forest fire, but only a forestry expert a whole area stricken with diseased trees. Or they might be observers of the state of the. crops in Canada and the United States. One well-known woman, Cora Hind, has done this in Canada for years, generally by motor-car. Think bow much quicker she could do it by air. In tropical agriculture the openings are even more numerous still. Girls are accepted as students at the Trinidad College of Tropical Agriculture, where, they train planters for’ the whole British Empire. It is said to be difficult for a woman to find a post as overseer of a tropical plantation or estate, but as a Government air overseer or inspector she could oversee not one, but many such estates.