UNPUNCTUAL WOMEN.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16712, 30 January 1926, Page 13 (Supplement)

UNPUNCTUAL WOMEN.

THEIR PRIVILEGE. SO NICE TO MAKE A MAN FUME. (By John Blunt in the Daily Mail.) Psychologists of Johns Hopkins University in America have been conducting a series of tests to discover what sense of time is possessed by men and women. The tests serve to show that women have a much more inaccurate sense than men, and this, apparently, solves the eternal problem of why a woman is so frequently late for an appointment. Well, it is always agreeable to have our problems solved for us, and many a man, irritably waiting for his lady-love, who is half an hour late, will no doubt derive a certain satisfaction from telling himself that it is due to her inferiority, but I cannot help wondering whether this is the real reason of woman's unpunctuality. The Sens© of Worth. In my opinion, women are usually unpunctual not so much because they have a bad sense of time, but because they have a good sense of their worth. They like to see men wait for them. They even like to see them impatiently consulting their watches, for the simple reason that it gives them an instinctive feeling of their power. It is nut really a failing,* it is a charm. it a man has an appointment with a woman and arrives late he arms himself with excuses (and, incidentally, it may be mentioned in this respect that excuses which are too elaborately perfect are liable to arouse suspicion) ; but "if a woman has an appointment with a man and arrives late, she merely smiles at his vexation.

It - is her privilege to be late, for she is the important member of the party, and men who object to her immemorial risrht are only foolish.

Superiority. I must say I appreciate this independence of spirit. After all, the real power wielded by women is not derived from the new idea of her political equality, hut from the old idea of her social superiority. It enables her to. do all sorts of things that a man would not dare to do; it gives her a kind of prestige even in her faults, such as in her inability to. be punctual, where a man would only get black looks. But I quite agree that the ordinary woman does seem to have a very poor sense of the urgency of lime, especially when shopping. I know of few things that give one a more despairing feeling than a day's shopping with a woman. One seems to wait for hours while nothing happens—that is to say, nothing that results in a purchase.

When a man goes shopping he wants to get it over, but when a woman goes shopping she wants to spend a happy morning. At least, this is my experience.

The training of a man teaches him the importance of fixed hours, whereas many women are trained only to kill time. Women, who [ work for their living are, as far as business is concerned, as punctual as men, for work is the real equaliser; but the very woman who is never late at her office in the morning will lose all sense of time in a shop and will not bother to be 100 punctual for asocial appointment.