SELF-MADE WOMEN

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2520, 19 December 1922, Page 4

SELF-MADE WOMEN

How is it that there are no “Selfmade women V’ asks a writer in an English daily. The answer is in the opinion of Miss Cicely Hamilton, that women have less energy and also less sense of adventure than men. ' As a consequence of the opening of trades and professions to women, she says, we shall be able to measure, as never befoi’e, the business capacities of women as compared with men. Not at once, of course, but in the course of a generation or two —when the newcomers settle to their work and we can take an average of results; It stands to reason that when girls were all bred to what is known as “homecraft,” it was impossible to say if they were good mechanics or stockbrokers, and only when a sufticieut number of young women have cast the unpopular homecraft behind them and elbowed into mechanics and stockbroking shall we be able to draw real comparisons between the average of their talent and workmanship and that of their masculine competitors. In these particular branches of i it is as yet too early to compare and pass judgment; but it is not too early to draw conclusions from the fact that women who take a business life .very seldom —if ev-

er —make large fortunes. Apparently the partcular kind of insight and energy which results in money-mak-ing on a large scale is not a feminine quality. The obvious reply and explanation is—lack of equal opportunity; and the explanation will be backed by a, list of the lucrative careers which are open to the hoy who is bent on making money and 1 still firmly closed against his sisleiv The argument is weighty, but it i> doubtful if it is weighty enough. Admitting that the average man has many opportunities of making good and of making money that are denied to the average womanadmitting also that .wealth breeds wealth, and that women all the world over are poorer than their brothers, and therefore, in this respect handicapped; 1 admitting ali this, we must set down against it the fairly frequent record of the self-made man who started his career with ha^f-a-crown!