WHERE WOMEN ARE IN DEMAND.

Hokitika Guardian, 25 March 1926, Page 4

WHERE WOMEN ARE IN DEMAND.

(By James A. Kilpatrick.)

A celebrated and cynical dramatist, with a conspicuous lack ol chivalry, has declared that the “initiative in sex transactions remains with women.” For aught I know, many women may secretly agree with him, but where marriage is concerned the truth seems to bo that the initiative belongs to the sex that is in the majority writes .1. A. Kilpatrick in a London daily.

I Here is no doubt about the initiative in those places, such as our overseas Dominions, where the men are in excess of the women. Out there the eagerness of men to marry—and marry early—is most marked; whereas in 'England, with art excess of a million women of marriageable age, tne tendency is for men to marry later, and. to the •extent of one in ten, to shirk marraigo altogether. All the great Dominions have a sjortage of women. Here in England there arc 1,096 females to every 1,000 males, but the proportion of women in Australia is only 976 per 1,000 men, in New Zealand 967. in South Africa 943, and in Canada as low as 910--that is to say. while 96 per 1,0 ,J women in England must remain spinsters, the Dominions have large numbers of marriageable men doomed to bachelorhood.

In Australia the ill-fated bachelors, according to the latest figures, "nuiecl about 96,090. in New Zealand 97,900. ill South Africa 44.01X3 (these are whites only), and in Canada 3,0,000 a total of 431.000 overseas men who must either marry wives outside the Dominions or not marry at all. It is an odd tiling, however, that, in spite of this shortage of women in the Dominions, the marriage rate in most cases is higher than m hiiidiuind. At home it is 16.3 per 1.0(A); in A listen i hi, New Zealand, and South Air tea it is 16.8. ‘ The highest percentage of marriages is in Natal, where the- rate is 17.3. and the lowest in Canada (14.0): yet, strangely enough, the proportion of women is on daily low m both of those areas. It is still lower ill the Transvaal, where there are 10 men to everv 9 women, rad there tile marriage rate is as high, ns 16.9. In South Allien and New Zealand as

a whole the chances of marriage are uniformly good: in Australia 11 icy vary from a 'rate of 14.2 in Tasmania to 16.2 in Victoria- and New .South 11 ales. Victoria is the only Australian State in which the women exceed the .men in number and Western Australia is that in which women are scarcest.