FEMALE TEACHERS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9112, 3 April 1908, Page 7

FEMALE TEACHERS.

♦ GRIEVANCE AGAINST THE MEN. “EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK.” The Victorian women teachers have several grievances. These were ventilated, at a crowded meeting in Melbourne the other day, when head teachers that had grown grey in the service and juniors in short frocks joined in denouncing the Department’s tyranny and its partiality towards men. “Equal pay for equal work” was one of the demands. In the eye of the Department, it was stated, women could not do the work of men, but as a matter of fact, they did do it. “I am in charge to-day of a school with nearly 400 children, ’ ’ said one of the elders, “though in theory it is impossible that I should do anything of the kind.” “The real dfference is not in what we do,” said another, “but in what we get. ” It took this teacher two years of writing to get ventilators for her school, during which time she had to give lessons on the necessity of ventilation to children sitting in a building, ventilated by a door, and by nothing else. To get a chair with a back to it took almost as long. But when her successor uame along—a man—the Department fell over itself in its hurry to make his lot better. He was provided with a verandah, two fire escapes, and an extra room, and got £7O more salary than his predecessor. for doing the same work. Young teachers gave astonishing instances of underpayment. One said she got 6s 8d a week, and paid 13s 6d a week for her board, and a shilling travelling expenses to get to the continuation class. Another said she taught 125 children for 6s a week, and saw no chance of a rise, although she had passed all examinations and matriculated. Another demand was for a minimum salary of £llO, on which a young woman would be prepared to go into the country. “A girl only gets £5 more than she would get in Melbourne,” declared a young lady who had declined to leave the town, “and hasn’t anything like as good a chance of meetiugjhe right class of man to marry. ’ ’ The statement that no woman in Victoria got more than £240 a year, made by an opponent of the equal pay demand, was controverted by inquiries made by two teachers into salaries paid outside the profession. “In occupations where;women please the vanity of men,” it was declared, “such as in the big drapery establishments, women in Melbourne are drawing £250 to £SOO a year. ’ ’ The opinion of one teacher was of men’s fairness to woman was “just rubbish.”