BAN ON WOMEN

Southland Times, Issue 21100, 4 June 1930, Page 5

BAN ON WOMEN

NEW RESTAURANT RULE. THE NEED FOR ESCORTS. Women’s organizations in London are protesting against the refusal of certain restaurant and £gfe proprietors who refuse to admit women unaccompanied by men after specified hours. “We have the support of practically all the leading women’s organizations in the country, irrespective of party and religion, for the abolition of this ban, which is an insult to all women,” Miss F. Barry, honorary secretary of the St. Joan’s Social and Political Alliance, which started the campaign for the removal of these restrictions, said recently. “A party of women went to a respectable restaurant for supper after a public meeting one night. They were not admitted. On another occasion a woman of seventy years and her cousin were refused admission to the dance hall of a restaurant. The ban on women has even been extended to some coffee stalls. “We cannot blame these proprietors altogether, for, as the . law stands, they are liable to a heavy fine and possibly to the forfeiture of their licence, if they allow their establishments to become a meeting-place of women even reputed to be of a certain class. “Our object is to have this law amended byl giving the proprietor only power to refuse the entrance to ‘any person who by words or behaviour molests or pesters any other person to their annoyance.’ If women behave themselves in such places they should not be subjected to any scrutiny whatever.”