CLEVER WOMEN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4768, 24 October 1924, Page 3

CLEVER WOMEN.

NOT LIKED BY MEN. DEFINITION AND REASON. Girls are apt to take too seriously the oft-repeated statement of many men—that they will not marry clever women. Jealousy, they say, is behind this criticism. Men don’t like clever women because they are afraid of their competition in commerce, in the arts, in the professions, and in public life.

But the fact is that, although many women have proved that they can make a place for themselves in all these pre-occupations, no pre-occupa-tion is attractive enough to draw women a<. large from the great work of home-making. And most men will tell you, if you pin them down to the point, tliat they welcome women’s competition in the labour market because the results of it show how little men have to fear on its account.

No; the reason why men dislike what they call "clever women” is because they have a very definite picture in their minds of what they mean by this type. They mean the woman who is anxious to show how clever she is at the expense of any man or all men ; who is always parading her achievements as a sex-adver-tisement, and who feels it her duty to coin sharp sarcasms at the expense of the other sex, and protect herself from reply behind the fltout shield of masculine chivalry.

Oh, yes. The world is full of such women. And they have no patience at all with the happy wives and mo’thers who rejoice in the slavery cf domestic ties, not being clever enough to know that their happiness is only an illusion.