NEW ZEALAND WOMEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 281, 27 November 1936, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND WOMEN

: ’ j ARE THEY OVERWORKED? ] j Seven kinds of cake and baker’s i ■ bread. 1 don’t call that very consist- i i ent.” This criticism was levelled a', } country afternoon teas in New Zea- 1 | land by Mrs Alfred Watt, the Cana- 1 I dian-born president of the Associated ; j Countrywomen of the World, who is a visitor to Christchurch this week. Her remark was the result of a general discussion on the question as 1 to whether country women in Ne.v Zealand were overworked. Mrs Watt ; had collected only general impres- 1 sions during her tour through New 1 Zealand, ana was reluctant to commit herself. The root of the trouble lay, she thought, in that general services such as cheap electricity and water were frequently lacking in rural areas, and that domestic help was hard to get. If country homes were equipped with labour-saving devices, she did not think country women would consider their plight a hard one. The diflicul-

ties of providing such services cheaply in a country with so scattered a population as New Zealand were pointed out to her. She recognised, she said, that the job would be an expensive one for any Government, but that it would be worth its while if it wished to encourage women to go on the land. Mrs Watt commented on the sense of beauty possessed by New Zealand country women. She had come to New’ Zealand at the invitation of the Women’s Institutes, and had spent several weeks in the North Islahd. Everywhere she had been received she had been struck by the sense of colour and form portrayed by the country women in their arrangement of Howers. Mrs Watt's visit to New Zealand is undertaken in the course of a pilgrimage of friendship among country women in many parts of the world. She has come from England via the United States, Canada and Fiji, anti will circle the globe, returning to England via Australia, Ceylon, Egypt, and the Mediterranean.