WORK AND LEISURE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10288, 24 May 1919, Page 8

WORK AND LEISURE.

"Whether the active women of th« •"•esent find happiness in greater meao . a than tho more passive women of the past," is a man's question (says Elizabeth Robins in WeeKiy Dispatch"). AVhat every woman knows is that even for the handful of "the privileged" (nearly negligible in any wide survey of the sex) the passive life of the women of the past was one of the illusions of men. The shibboleth of the privileged woman has been her supposed leisure. The word gave its name to her class. The alleged fact constituted her charm. Part of the ritual of her life was punctilious banishment from masculine eyes of any activity that was not play or "fancy" work. Even in what was called her sphere, the proof of the successful maitresse da maison was the fact that the looker-oa was unconscious of the domestic machinery. This ideal was so rigorously lived up to that to this day the most intelligent and sympathetic . man has the scantiest idea of the activity necessary on the part of the "passive" woman to keep the household machinery ningIf we compare the so-called "active life" of tho woman in an office to-day, or even the woman doing farm, garden, or engineering work, with the "passive" life of the working-class mother of a family, we are face to face with tho truly staggering discovery that tho longer hours and _ the heavier labour fall on the "passive" homo-tied woman.