FROM A YORKSHIRE WINDOW

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5279, 16 December 1946, Page 2

FROM A YORKSHIRE WINDOW

WOMA N' S FUTURE EQIJALITY IN INDUSTRY AND ■DEFENm f wo matters Save recently come to public notice which vit'ally" a'ff-ect the future of women in Britain. The fifst is -the •Caibinet's idecision to omit women from the new scheme for cofnpulsory military service; the second is contained in ' the majority report of the Royal Commission on equal pay, the whole trend of which is against that prnciple. The attitude' of ' Br itish women to their omission from conscription. apart froni the relief- hatural to any . escape from compnlsion, may perbaps be indicated by that of a youth coUference in a Yorkshire town a sb'orl while ago, at one session of which I funetioned on a Brains Trust. A question sent up asked whether th6 rBains Crust 'thpught that girls should be conscripted, as well as boys. Each -member of the Trust replied that if conscription was necessary, it should apply to both sexes, though the service required of girls should: nol necessarily be of a mijitary nature. The, audience, all boys and girls approaching conscription age, cordialiy applauded these replies. Responsibility Accepted. In line wtih this acceptance of the eual sharing of responsibility f oi their country's defence by both sexes is the Government statement that the conscriptioin qf girls Jwas seriously considered but turned down as. impracticable and likely to cause an unjustifiable dislocation of eivil life. Women are more urgently needed in industry than in the Services, and t.he complications of dividing the available^ girl conscripts in pro.per proportion6 betweeen civil and military life, foi suc)h a comparativelly shorti peridd as 18 hipnths, apparently seemed not worth while. The report of the Royal 'Commission, from which a •mjnority group dissented, came as a disappointment. The various groups which represenl women in the sociologieal, economic. educational and industrial fields have mostly. been silent so far. As the opportunity for female labour in tht West Riding textile trade has. always been, large (Yorkshire women in the lower ineome brackets have a long tradition of wage-earning independence, while in all income brackets the Yonkshire woman is a shrewd manager of household finance, very well aware of the value, iboth of herseli and of money. Yorkshire women may, therefore, be expected to have something trenchant to say on this question of equal pay for equal work. The outlook of woman in the British post-war world is promising but somewhat paradoxical. An immense field of usefulness lies open to her, a field wider than ever before; it if a field which she. longs to enter, but of ten cannot, owing to the shorfcage of help in the home. "Tipped Scales of Victoryt" It may be useful to recall some oi the statistics of British women's work during World War IT. 'In 1944 thert were 17 million Women in Britain betwebn the age of 16 and 64. Ten million of these were employed h. doinestic work (including ihe care oi nine million children under the agf of 14); many of them performed voluntary war work as far as an. indeed rather further than they wei t able. Canteens, W.V."3'., civil^ defence fire-watching, savings collections, salvage, drew largely iupon their scanty . leisure. The other seven million women were "gainfully employed" within the Armed Forces of the countrj or in industry. Their contribution ir. those spheres was sovremarkable that Mr. Ernest Bevin, at that time Minister of Labour and National Service, observed that the women had "tippct. the scales of victory." In iact, a twofold "upgrading" m the popular valuation of women's work took pl&ce in this country, owing to the conditions of wartime life. On the one hand, the range of jobs m industry which were adequately performed by- women expanded enormously and their industrial value experienced a corresponding expansion. On the other, the importance oi' women's household work was floodlighted by the problems of rationand by the special Government provisions made for expectant mothers and for children. Britain's people arc justly proud of the 'honest working of their rationing- system; now it is the women who work the rationing system. To balanee hread units, tmned "points" food and the small meat and fat ration eo as-to produce a palatable and nutritious diet is neither an easy 'nor an unintelligent task; the British woman has performed it and continues to perform it ad-mirably. t, Great Withdrawal. ' - Now the men have co'me out of the Forces; their wives have returned to them, their eweethearts have maxried ' them. The resuit is a great withdrawal of womtn from industry into household ta&ks which are recognised to ihe necessary and important. But British industry needs all the labour it can get, and women's labour is well worth having, so the 'Government is eager that all those women Who can return to industry shall do so. Yet the scarcity of household help often makes this extremely difficult, even for women eager to re-enter gainful employment. - Almost all women in the middle in- • 'come bracket, for instance, have to spend m.any more hours each. week on hO'Useholdi worikl than they did before World War It It is boped tbat 'the Governnient-sponsored National •institute of Houseworkers, a inaugurated: last yeat, wi.ll ease the situa- , tion- .by proyiding •hig'hly-train'ed, efficient domestic workers who, working •under thoroughly gqod conditions, will cope with the tasks of several househofds and set-othen women free |ox other useful tasks for which they in turn have ib.een trained. „ For those in the favourable inddstrial position of British women toliday, the trend pf the Royal Com-

mission's analysis seems puzzlii|g, and they await with keen interest the reaetions of the Ministerial committee set up to consider the report. The open, sensi'ble and cairn discussion of all these problem's of woman's work, privileges and i-esponsibilities, is the hopeful featui'e of the British woman's post-war isituation.