THE INCREASE OF WOMEN.

Waikato Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 3493, 13 November 1894, Page 7

THE INCREASE OF WOMEN.

It is a startling fact that in ten years women have gained on men in South Australia in mere numbers by nearly 10,000, and they are invading one realm of work after another in steadily increasing numbers. The rough work of the farm, the exposure and hardship of the station, might seem fatally unsuited to women; tr A . yet in South Australia at the present-foment there, are 465 women earning their, living., as, farmers and market gardeners, 134 more employed as dairy produce sellers, 68 are ' squatters and dairy farmers,' besides an everexpanding multitude as book keepers, telegraph , clerks,, etc. , ~In; 1881 every seventh women in the colony earned her own bread, but the number of femine bread-winners during the decade has increased nearly 15 per cent; and, roughly ' 'Speaking, every sixth' woman in South Australia now earns her own living. The number of men employed in agriculture in the colony is 73 less than in 1S81; the number of women ongaged in that unfeminioe toil has increased by 632! In pastoral pursuits there is an increase in the ten years of 1331, of whom nearly the whole number are females. The number of women who earn their living as 'general and undefined dealers on chance events'—whatever this nwy mean —has riseu. from 71 in 1881 to 760 in 1891. These figures certainly prove that a steadily* increasing share of the burden of existsnce is being laid on feminine ehouldere. r 'A3."