WHY WOMEN STEAL

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 148, 10 July 1937, Page 17

WHY WOMEN STEAL

— Own Correspondent.V .

An American Analytis

(Bv ASr Mail-

KEW YORK, June 9. A disclosure that women who misappropriate the funds of -their employersfl do so, in the main, to cover up the incompetence and irresponaibility of their husbands, is made as a result oi an analy6is of the def alcations of 400 women employees .by .the largest fidelsity guarantee Ara in the United States. , . From, this analysis emerges & eomposite figure, the average woman embezzler. She is married, 35 years old, with five years' experience in a mercantile establish'ment. She lias nothing whatover in common with the criminal type.' She is rooted in the nommunity, Tespectcd by her ' neigkbours, She does nofc drink, gambie, or speculate. Ske is intelligent and a good worker. \Vhyr then, did ehe .embezzle funds? Bccause she felt that her husband did not provide what she considered her family And herself should have. She had no ideas of wholesale thievery. She took a iittle at a timo for this or that emergency. She differed from the mai© offender in that she did not visualise the pleasures of money for herself, bhy a new big car, or astonish Ihe waiter with a large tip.' Of the 400 cases, 191, or nearly half, were" married. Of the husbands., 52 lived beyond the family means, 35 failed to meet the wife's standard of family living, 2S were responsible for their wives' embezzlement, and 18 were unemployed. Supplementing these was the desire for social status, and the breathless chase to "keep up with the Joneses."