Dutch Wives Claim Right to Job

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 144, 21 June 1939, Page 2

Dutch Wives Claim Right to Job

AMSTERDAM —Women of the Neih ■rlands aro face to face with a new i_ robleni concerning their status. Rudolph 11. Romine, Minister I’oi Social Affairs, has declared his intention of introducing a bill under which married women will bo forbidden tc cany on a business or a profession simply because they feel an urge in such a direction. In the case of married women, breadwinners, or of women married to men who earn less than £3 a week, or ol women who servo in their husbands’ shops, Mr Romme is prepared to be lenient. There is logic, he admits, in “allowing” such women to work. He is prepared, however, to be adamant in regard to married women who work because they want to work, and for the icason that, in his opinion, such work constitutes an act of desertion by which ■i married woman willfully neglects her ..’ork as wife and mother. The women of Holland are in vigorous opposition. They contend that, even on a generous estimate, not mo:Jian 6,000 among them will be oblige.. ;o relinquish their jobs. But that is no: the point. The real point lies, they say. in the fact that every grown individu: who is of sound intelligence is, or at ::ny rate should be, capable of deciding his destiny for himself, and that any act of the State which sets aside that lace constitutes an injustice which can ring good to nobody. If tho married woman, capable o! contributing things of value to the general community, is granted -the right of contribution., the community will be the richer, tho women contend, and her individual home the happier. Nothing, they declare, is more .satisfying and more satisfactory to a woman than the free use of her talents in the field in which those can best be exercised.