WHAT INTERESTS WOMEN

Ladies' Mirror, Volume I, Issue 8, 1 February 1923, Page 9

WHAT INTERESTS WOMEN

By L. K. YATES

"WHAT a world!" said Cecilia, in answer to my inquiry as to her first week's experience of London office life. She then relapsed into silence.

Cecilia was vital to her finger tips, and her secretarial engagement had filled her cup to overflowing. Her dismay was disquieting. But only at the close of her week-end at our seaside cottage could I extricate the cause of her disillusionment. There were apparently few female employees in the large engineering firm, and Cecilia worked for the “Heads” in the corner of their large office. “Quite nice men! Oh, yes, and pleasant to her, of course. But when not directly addressing her they talked such stodge about iron and steel, machinery and politics. Sport! Yes, in a way; but mostly about Things. She was bored stiff. People who are Not Noticed. They never noticed people round them. Even their own “junior staff,” jolly little kids, unless they banged a door, or sniffed, or forgot something, no one knew they lived. The boys sat in a dark, windowless office, with a subscription box on the mantelpiece labelled “Fresh Air Fund.” She had said to the youngest Head, “How awful to have such a box there,” and he had answered, “Well, what’s wrong with it, anyway? Isn’t it a deserving charity?” My poor sea-born Cecilia! Then we discussed it. I am modern enough to know that heart-to-heart talks are delightfully, psycho-analy-lytically right—and we found that what we are up against, Cecilia and I and the rest of the women, is that our interests arc profoundly different from those of other creations, men, horses or dogs. It isn’t our fault. I remember reading somewhere that “what was settled ages ago by the prehistoric protozoa cannot be altered by Acts of Parliament,” so I take it Nature is responsible. So, unashamed, Cecilia and I burrowed mentally, and found that what really interests women is other people. Not People with a big “P,” but just ordinary folk in offices, or homes or at the seaside. Men, we agreed, apart from their home life, are chiefly interested in Things, Engineering or “high finance,” Russia or Germany, peace or war. But, at bottom, women are chiefly concerned with the people who handle the Things, or who live in the other countries, or with the effects of war or of peace on family life. Interest in People. Cecilia then argued that a woman’s concern in her own appearance was only an offshoot of her interest in people— time, in menthus - the wearing of adornments was quite a moral vice. “The adornment-interest' may become debased,” said I. Cecilia pouted. So we passed on quickly to women’s interests outside the home. We found three principal activities: Agriculture, housing and education, the larger aspects of the woman’s workshop, her children’s upbringing and the family food are, or would likely become, the chief home interests of the women voters. And with a shock of joy we realised that for relaxation women naturally turn to novels, the reflexion of other people’s lives and for study, enjoy geography, history, anthropology or any of the Arts. We _ agreed that there are many exceptional women who have what we called a man’s attitude to life, but, on the whole, women (because they are women) are or will be interested in the human aspects of home or international politics rather than in “Trade Following the Flag,” and in the things that money can buy, rather than in the accumulation of money itself. We left it at that.