UNCHANGING WOMEN.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17466, 28 July 1928, Page 15 (Supplement)

UNCHANGING WOMEN.

EXCEPT IN DRESS. REPLIES TO MR MICHAEL ARLEN. "The women of the future will in all essentials be exactly like the women of llic past." This was the reply of Mrs Belloc Lowndes, the novelist, to questions asked by Mr Michael Arlen, author of "The Green Hat" and other books. "What will happen to women? What will progress do to them? . . . Will they gradually—and not very gradually cither —oust men from spheres peculiarly manly?" he asked. "Women have altered much less than men throughout the ages," said Mrs Belloc Lowndes. "It is men who have been altering throughout history—and it is men who will go on altering." She declared — Marriage First. "So long as there are any women in the world women will want to get married. In all my life I have met only one woman who never thought of marriage. "As to fear that girls will go back to chaperones, I do not think there is any ground for it; but I do think that they will in the future cover themselves up more than they do to-day—-and the only reason for this will be Fashion." Miss Florence Underwood, secretary of the Women's Freedom League, replied to Mr Arlen from the feminist point of view. She said — "Certainly women will go on taking jobs that men now do —for the reason that they will find themselves qiute as well able to do them. The women of the future will not be likely to take any notice of what men may think are not suitable jobs for them—they will go on competing with men. "To-day most men live to cherish the idea that women are dependent on them; but the men of the future will have to get that idea out of their heads, if it is still there. Men do not realise that there are a great many women who are better able to protect themselves economically and in every other way than men are to protect them. And their numbers will be much greater in the future. , "Mr Arlen need not worry himself about how the women of the future will dress. If women ever want to go back to fashions of the past they will do so; and men will not be consulted."