MUSIC ACTIVITIES

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 62, 14 March 1934, Page 13

MUSIC ACTIVITIES

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Miss Clero, speaking at a recent meeting of the Music Teachers' Association, told of recent activities in London, from whence she has returned lately. She found that music was more of an essential in education now than it was eight or ten years ago. In visiting a number of ordinary educational establishments, she often noticed the whole number of pupils keenly engaged in various forms of musical activity. They had percussion bands, pipe bands (with instruments of their own making), and many others. The great musicians of the day, English and foreign, drew large audiences. The speaker showed a number of wonderful and delightful concert programmes, proving that music was in'a flourishing condition. .in extent and variety. During the evening Miss Arera Moginie, Miss Gertrude Johnston, and Miss Ngaire Coster contributed some delightful and much-appreciated items. The gathering was a- most successful one, about 45 members - being^reseat.

EMPLOYED DISMISSED

MARRIED WOMEN'S JOBS

FEMINISTS UP IN ARMS

Mrs. Alice Park, of Palo Alto, California, who lias been interested in numerous feminist movements in the United States, was one of the passengers on board the American ship Lurline, which arrived in Sydney last week, and she said to a representative of the Sydney "Women's Journal" that the dismissal' of married women from employment was the burning feminist question in America today. Thousands of married women had lost their positions, both in the professional and industrial field, and feminists everywhere were up in arms at what they deemed to be interference with the'rights of their sex. Mrs. Park, as a true feminist, claims the' right of every woman to decide whether she shall or shall not work for recompense. All should be free to make the choice. Home and family ties were paramount, but no legal or conventional obstacle should impede the path-of the woman who wished to become a wage-earner. CBUSADE TO REMOVE WOMEN. The crusade to remove women from the wage-earning field -was world-wide, said Mrs. Park. She noted that when the first wholesale dismissals of married women took place in Hungary, 700 divorce papers had been signed within the first week, and the same thing had happened' in' America, and was happening. Women sought dissolution of marriage, in many ' cases, if it were the thiiis; that prevented them from earning for themsplves, and girls considered the marriage tie very deeply, and its effect on the possibility of them ever turning their ability into lucrative channels.. Mrs. Park was a. prominent suffragette, but suffrage for.wtuucn, she says, is only the door that loads to opportunity. Women are too apt to think that when ' tlu;y got suffrage on equal terms with men everything else was equal. There wore still 'numerous disabilities, under which women laboured, and the laws being different in each of the States, uniformity was being aimed at. " ' ; The National Women's Party was working for the "Equiil Rights Amendment," to be embodied in the Constitution of-.the United- States, and' if this were achieved there, would be greater equality between the sexes. The primary object of the party was to secure for women, complete equality with men under the law and in all human relationships, and, although . the achievement of this ideal seemed a long way off, it was none the less desirable.