WOMAN THE REBEL.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1752, 17 May 1913, Page 11

WOMAN THE REBEL.

WHAT IS HER SPHERE P [By Imogen.] Of Into we have teen hearing very much (bout the defects in the modern system of education for girls, and one of tho ohief arguments brought against it is, that by educating our girls on tho same lines as boys, we are "de-womanising" h&r—destroying as fast as we can all her natural feminine instincts, and placing before her an altogether false ideal.

Miss Mary Richmond, in the course of an interesting speech (mado the other night at the inoeting of tho Richmond Free Kindergarten Council) said that "the greatest honour a young ambitious woman could imagine and aspire to was to follow the career of a man, and in that her womanhood was at a discount—it was a clog to her, a drawback." Again, later on. Miss Richmond said, in speaking of tho "advanced" woman of tho day: "I .suppose these leaders of our sex wish for the right to work at men's work because they think at grander, better work than any women havo ever found to do along feminino' lines." \ After all, it is so difficult to say which is man's work and which is woman's, because there is no sex in brain power. The only barriers to a career of any kind are the lack of ability, mental or physical, lack of inclination, or lack of finance, and the only reason why a woman ijoes in for a difficult and arduous career is because hor natural inclination turns that way. Certainly r.ot because she thinks it an honour to follow in the footsteps of a man. It might as well to eaiu that all men should bo doctors, or lawyers, or waterside workers as to say that woman's field lies on one side of a fence only—that enclosure which has hitherto been called woman's sphere. What woman is working for. to-day, especially the woman at Home, is to have the right to choose that career for which her abilities fit her—a fair enough demand, one would think. It is Nature only that has the right to say -with any ■finality how far woman may go, which is her work and which is not, and, so far, that final word has. not yet been said— by ber. More and more woman is being forced into the world to work for her living. Far too often 6he is but the sport of circumstance, and, to be able to hold her own in the turmoil of competition, she must be trained as man is trained. 'Nothing less will help her. For good or ill, she has been pushed by a force outside herself into the stream of industrial • activities and she cannot turn back. Tho only thing for her to do is to make herself as efficient as possible, and, to gain this efficiency, she must sharo the ,educa-

tlon that man is riven. One of tho standing complaints that men havo against girls in the business world is that very lack of efficiency. . It must be a very Rood thing for every girl to spend, if possible, a year or mora training m a kindergarten. But give her, an addition, everything that will open her mind; train her faculties, and give her tho necessary judgment and discrimination with which to meet and examine her world. There is so much else than the domestic side of life. No- matter how highly trained a woman's mind and intellect may bo sho docs not loso her Innate love, if sho be normal, for tho fundamental humanities, and should She havo been spending the greater part of her day at work that was not always regarded as being woman's work, sho probably has the greater lovo for homo and tho things »f home. Woman haa learnt all about "the struggle for life" and the "survival of tho fittest" by bitter experience and by force Df circumstances, and if sho be wise, she will equip herself at all points for that itrug r 'le because she never knows at what boment she may be precipitated into tho Conflict. Tho old "womanly ' occupations lire suitable for many girls undoubtedlythey havo certainly grown, wider and fleeper-but there are others who feci tho iall for perhaps/ moro strenuous holds Wf Tvork Many women aro endowed nowadays with what was regarded as a' man s brain" and bent of mind, and they would suffocate in an atmosphere of creches, kindergartens, and domestic work. It is j aat that their womanhood of that motherhood means less to them than it does to the other women —it probably means more fbut, in a world whore they lead single lives more frequently than of old, their Interests must necessarily lie m other directions. . When women obtain their way politically one cannot help thinking thatthere is at least a greater chance for the improvement of tne many frightful social and [nduirtrial conditions that at present exist. It takes two points of view—the mans end the woman's—to deal with tho conditions to-day because they affect both* narticularly the latter. It might even bo that if Now Zealand women lived and worked in England for eomo years and came face to fac9 with the awful lives leu by those who are pushed down into the abyss by the terrible pressure of industrial conditions, if they saw something of the utter disregard for tho safety ot women and ohildren, they, too, might do J'unwornanly" things.