WOMEN AS MAYORS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20364, 23 July 1934, Page 10

WOMEN AS MAYORS.

Successful Administrators Abroad. AUCKLAND CANDIDATE. That a woman, Miss Ellen Melville, should be approached with a request to stand for the Auckland Mayoralty is a sign that New Zealand is catching up with the times. In older countries, of course, particular! v in England, women Mayors are almost commonplace. They were not unknown even when women were not considered fit to be entrusted with a Parliamentary vote, municipal affairs being looked upon as a sort of glorified housekeeping suited to female aptitudes. It was not, however, until Miss Margaret Boavan was appointed to the civic chair of Liverpool, with the more spec tacular status of Lord Mayor, that world-wide publicity was focused on any of these achievements. Miss Beavan’s administration, it may be said, was an unqualified success. Another important English seaport, Southampton, has also had a woman Mayor, who was also, by virtue of her office, admiral of the port, and entitled to all sorts of impressive salutes and dignities. Perhaps the best testimony to tho early incumbents of these offices is tao fact that at recent municipal elections m England 15 women Mayors were elected. Among the places thus distinguished is the University town of Cambridge, whera the chair is occupied by Mrs. Keynes, mother of Professor J. M. Keynes, the distinguished economist. Many of the other appointees were elected to fill a second term of office. In Scotland, for the first time in history, three towns have appointed women to the office of Provost, which corresponds to that of Mayor. In South Africa, a country which does not hold advanced views on the status of women, having only recently extended to them the Parliamentary franchise, a. woman, Mrs. Malherbe, was elected Mayor, of the administrative capital,. Pretoria, and received much commenda-< tion for her handling of the severe unemployment problem with which the city was faced. But after all New Zealand is not so backward as this recital of the achievements of women iu other countries would seem to indicate, for it was in this country—back in the dear dead days when we aspired to lead and let the rest of the world follow—that the first woman Mayor in the British Empire took office, Mrs. Klizabetn Yates, who in the later years of last century occupied the Mayoral chair of Onehunga.