WOMAN'S WORK.

Observer, Volume XXXIX, Issue 48, 2 August 1919, Page 3

WOMAN'S WORK.

The Handicap — Man

THE incomparable work of British women in the war; the heroism of their endeavours and the .glories of their accomplishments makes the subject of their future place among the rulers of the Empire a fascinating one. It is held as an easy belief amongst comfortable men constitutionally agreeable to remain lords of the nation, that the woman xeally does rule the earth, merely permitting the man the luxury of supposing himself the pre-eminent being. On the whole, the male of mankind is the chief executant by custom, resulting of course from the care man's instinct of predation capture and domination of the female by physical force. It is proved through successive generations that mental evolution and .expansion is common to female and male, and that in very fact the dominant man often owes the mental dominance rather to these qualities in his mother than his father. In mere mental calisthenics by which we often quite wrongly gauge ability, the girls frequently beat the boys, and the reason is that the female brain is newer te the job of scholastic attainment. Executive ability has nothing to do with scholastic attainment, nor has the power of origination, or leadership, anything to with education. The advanced woman, deeply feeling what her sex has been able to accomplish, often with the sexual handicap of male antagonism, is right in holding that if she can succeed in competition with her brother, she ought to be permitted a larger hand in the government of her country. If it is pointed out to her that even if she is permitted to sit in Parliament she does not become a candidate, she replies that the antagonism of man is the handicap to her attempt. She holds that her sense of justice is. as fine as that of a man, that there is indeed no reason why there should not be women judges, women magistrates, women on every kind of executive public body, on the ground that the larger part of the people—the women and children should be represented by those who are most sympathetic to them. * * * It was suggested to this writer by an accomplished woman that the age old injustice that in a certain social dereliction resulting in the woman paying and the man being allowed to go "scot free," (so far as character is concerned) might be eleminated by a stronger representation of women in executive public offices. The writer is not sure that woman's justice to woman would be superior iko man's justice to woman, but the

experiment of mixed female and male juries in certain cases would decide this point. The lady does not believe that the larger entry of women into executive public positions would put these women executants out of the marriage market, but that on the contrary the relations of the sexes would be ennobled by a greater sex equalitj' mutual forbearance and more equitable adjustment of society. * * * There is a splendid field for woman representation and work in such subjects as the accommodation of young women, many of them mothers, or about to become mothers on a recent troop transport. If man's inhumanity to man is a subject for mourning, official man's inhumanity to women would make the angels weep. No more powerful text from which to preach the Gospel of woman representation could be chosen than that supplied in the story of that transport which brought soldiers' wives to New Zealand.