Feminine Interests

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 579, 4 February 1929, Page 5

Feminine Interests

Women , Try Science

A Professor's Advice

TO ask, “{Should women learn science V 9 is like asking the question. “Would you like to take poison or not*?” There is only one answer that a man in his senses can give, according to Professor A. M. Low, who gives tlie following reasons:—

THE universal popularity of radio has dispelled the misunderstand-

ing that science is a dull affair of fact and figures, and there is now a very genuine demand for “popular science.”

Even stockbrokers take a slight in terest in science, and when they get home are ashamed —if they are capable of shame —when they cannot answer their youngster’s questions, “Daddy, what makes the sunset red?”

The modern woman may not be diplomatic enough to reply, like her grandmother, “Hush, dear, daddy’s so tired after the office.” She simply gives the explanation of dust particles in the atmosphere, and goes on to reflect that you cannot judge a man by his ability to read Caesar. Women are just beginning to realise that an engineer is not a man who goes round with a pick-axe, nor a chemist a man who mixes pills! The reasons why women should learn science are exactly the same as those why men should learn, with a few others added. It is an appalling reflection on our ideas of education that women should be able to read Beowulf in the original but be unable to tell their children why petrol makes a taxi’s wheels go round. There are thousands who spend hours in a shop discussing dress materials without having the faintest knowledge of how they are made. They would probably be amazed if you told them that the artificial silk dress they were wearing was a near relation of newspaper, and only a few months ago was part of a Canadian forest. Although they prepare, or are supposed to prepare, three meals a day, they cannot tell you what happens

to food when it is cooked, or why, when they are boiled, an egg is hard and a potato soft. Who knows why we can eat rotten game, yet find bad mutton a danger? Women have allowed themselves to be kept in ignorance of these facts, but in the future they will be more content to leave electric lights and bells to their husbands than they will to remain ignorant of what men talk about after dinner. Men have been smoking for some three cen-

A pretty suggestion for the young girl’s dance frock; expressed in paleet shell pink spot net, the model is cut with a long, fitting bocfice, dipping low over tfee hip, attached to a couple of deep diagonal flounces which form the skirt. The whole is posed over a slim satin slip in the same dainty colour.

turies, but even to-day there are many who do not know that when they light a cigarette, the smoke, gases, and ash weigh more than the original tobacco.

It is no good a woman asking her husband why the poisons in her lipstick do not make him a widower, because he, alas, does not know. He is even ignorant of the reason why the chlorine in salt does not affect him, while chlorine at the front killed hundreds of men. She will have to turn to science to satisfy her thirst for knowledge. I only hope that in this search for knowledge she will be more fortunate than Adam’s wife and Mrs. Lott! There is an idea that women, for some reason, are incapable of learning science. Granted that the women scientists from Hypatia of Alexandria and Cleopatra the Learned to Mme. Curie and Krukowski have discovered little in comparison with their numerous male colleagues. But although one swallow does not make a summer, an ever-increasing number of swallows do indicate the approach of that season. Where 30

years ago there was one woman scientist, there are to-day a dozen, and it is probable that in the future women’s intuitive grasp which enables her to understand results, will make her a dangerous rival. In any case, Professor Low speaks of a knowledge of popular science rather than a detailed knowledge of some particular branch. In motor schools he notices that women are sometimes more interested than men in the mechanical side of the tuition, and at exhibitions of inventions they may outnumber men by two to one. Women must understand and love science because only through science can they achieve true emancipation. The comparative freedom ot' tb modern woman is due largely to the work of science in making housework easier. Science is a life in itself for any woman worthy of her salt. The modern housewife does not have to get down at six in the morning to light the fire and put on the porridge, because science has given her a gas fire and a patent porridge. She does not refuse invitations to parties because her hands are not fit to be seen.

What is the good of knowing that Nelson’s column is half the height of all the Kings of England placed end to end? Is it not better by far to Know why it is that oil smooths troubled waters, or produces the colours of the rainbow when upset into a puddle by the roadside?