The Wanganui Chronicle FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1937. THE WOMAN WORKER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 275, 19 November 1937, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1937. THE WOMAN WORKER

yuE position of women as industrial workers is requiring much

more attention than it has been previously given. In Germany there has been a tendency to discourage the married woman taking part in the industrial production of the community, but this is only a superficial movement for it transfers her activities from the factory to the home. Assuming that a number of married women who were engaged in a jam factory were discharged from their employment, it is reasonable to assume that in their leisure hours they would not lapse into idleness after doing the ordinary work of preparing the meals and doing the ordinary round of household duties. Their presence in the home would be definitely productive. They would be able to, and some of them would, make their own clothes, or at least some of them; they would prepare their own foods to a larger extent than when they were in employment. Instead of opening cans they would be corking bottles. In effect, then, their productive activities would not be less, but would only be transferred from a highly-equipped establishment for production to a home unit of production which may not be as efficient. In such circumstances, then, the standard of living would not be as high in that community as it could be. That, however, is only one phase of the matter. Industry calls for the performance of a variety of tasks, some of which can best be performed by men and some can best be performed by women. The technique of industry is continually changing, and the machine is taking up the burdensome nature of work. Many operations which were beyond the physical strength of women have, by the aid of the machine, been brought into the scope of women’s work: that is, work at which women can be expected to exeel over men. Women are able to perform routine tasks better than men, while men generally are better able to exercise initiative in meeting emergencies or unusual situations. Herein is presented a psychological problem which will demand more attention being paid to it in the future than has been given to it in the past. As industry moves forward it will be necessary for those plotting out the schemes of production to pay more and more attention to the labour force. In England the major’ industries grew out of the handicrafts, which were frequently homecrafts, and which slowly developed factory units. The mass production unit of to-day has, consequently, grown out of a general evolution, and the adaptation of the labour force to the new conditions has been brought about gradually. In the United .States of America conditions did not take on such an orderly movement and, consequently, it presented difficulties in the solution of which brought about unexpected results. Industry grew so fast there that an immigrant population had to be recruited. The first problem which presented itself was the language problem. To overcome this, or to reduce it to a minimum of disadvantage, the American engineers so fashioned productive work that it required of the individual as few tasks as possible, and those tasks were reduced to a minimum number of human movements in order that the instructions should be of the simplest kind. The over-simplification of industrial tasks was made possible by the presence in the United States of a large domestic market, but it had at least two effects: One, it concentrated industrial populations in specific areas; and two, it gave to those people monotonous employment. The cotton mills centred on Manchester, Alabama, the rubber industry centred on Akron, the motor industry centred on Detriot, and the meat-packing industry centred on Chicago. In these factories womenfolk found employment of a routine kind in which they excelled men. The result has been a large concentration of womenfolk in certain industrial centres. Obviously, it is socially undesirable for industry to bring about, quite unconsciously, of course, a segregation of men and women. The even spread of the sexes must be maintained, and if industry proceeds on its simplification process it is possible that the segregation movement may go beyond desirable limits. It is not enough to take married women out of the factories and put them in the home: industry will have to take a wider view of this human problem of the sex balance. This may not be a problem for to-day, but it is very likely to be a problem for to-morrow. Fortunately for this problem a great mass of statistical data is becoming available, and a conscientious study of this data may enable the world to avoid what could be a dislocation of the first magnitude.