MARRIED WOMEN TEACHERS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 10 January 1931, Page 2

MARRIED WOMEN TEACHERS

DISMISSALS IN NEW SOUTH WALES MINISTER'S ACTION SYDNEY, 31st December. Quite a young man —and a likeablo one, too —who looks out on life as with the enthusiastic eyes of youth, the Minister for Education, Mr Davies — he occupied the same portfolio in the previous make-shift Lang Government that ‘.followed the Labour split—has probably not yet realised fully the load of trouble that he has brought down upon his head by bis startling move to dismiss from the service of the Education Department women teachers, about 600 in all, whose husbands are also in work and are capable of supporting them. ‘ Mr Davies is distinotly unpopular with the 600 faced with the unwelcome prospect of the sack; with their busbands ; with young ladies in the service still unwed but who perhaps have dreamed of nuptial plans which will not deprive them of their economic independence, and with feminists who view with grave, disquiet the prospect of any encroachment upon the field which woman has won for herself. The storm in all its fury will break about Mr Davies when the day comes for these married women teachers to get back to their pots and pans, or to pursue the somewhat hopeless task just now of looking for other work in order to preserve their economic independence. If, however, Mr Davies sticks to his guns he will have the community generally behind him in his action. In good times there is perhaps little or nothing wrong with women enjoying, at one and the same time, marriage and a remunerative career. The general feeling, however, is that in hard times like the present they cannot have it both ways, with so many thousands of families lacking the regular wages of even the ordinarily-ac-cepted bread-winner. Another point is that married women, by taking on jobs when their husbands are in work, are keeping men out of employment and reducing the supply of potential husbands.—“ Press” correspondent.

The decision of the Minister of Education in New South Wales to dismiss married women teachers whoso husbands are capable of supporting them was strongly approved by the Sydney “Morning Herald.” “Whereas the Minister was unmistakably in the wrong on most of the points on which he touched, points connected for the greater part with the work of his own department and education in general,” it declared, “he was in the main unmistakably right on this point of married women and employment —which is not, properly speaking, a matter of sectional interest at all. It has only arisen in the teaching world because there are so many women teachers.” Continuing, the Sydney newspaper said: “When the rush of women into business life on the grand scale first began, some shrewd observers saw quite clearly that there was involved a definite departure from the system on which the world has for centuries worked, the family supported by the labour of the father. That was the ideal, and proved, whenever attained, a happy one. Exceptions were not so numerous as to make the handling of them impossible. Nor need it have been very difficult to facilitate the entry of more and more women into those walks of life for which they have an admitted natural capacity—nursing for example, and this very business of teaching, especially the teaching of the youngest. But, as in/ so many other social changes, there has been no pause or limit set. Women, by accepting, often for lower remuneration, positions which they cannot fill any more fittingly than men, have driven men out of employment, and obviously reduced the world’s supply of potential husbands. A number, however, have rather adroitly contrived to have it both ways, enjoying both marriage and a career.”