Women Go Abroad

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 684, 8 June 1929, Page 8

Women Go Abroad

They Travel More Than Men

WOMEN of Auckland travel more than the men. Figures prove it. Even now many of them are on the other side of the world for a few months so that they might escape the New Zealand winter and live in perpetual summer. Men of Auckland, presumably, are still saving up for their Continental trip, and working to pay the passages of their wives and relations.

Every overseas steamer takes away some of Auckland’s womenfolk. Maids, matrons, and maiden aunts liave left on their pilgrimage to the Continental watering places, and even in this, the mid-month of winter, the outgoing passenger lists show a heavy preponderance of women. In holiday times, of course, women sea-trippers overwhelm men numerically. When the Eastertide steamers left New Zealand and Australian ports two months ago for America and England, the battalion of women was nearly twice that of the men on some of the bigger liners. So it is with Auckland. On almost every ship to leave the port during May—May is selected merely as an example of the general tendency—there were more names bearing the prefixes Mrs. and Miss than those indicating male passengers. The Aorangi, the second largest passenger vessel afloat in these waters, left Auckland on May 7 for Suva, Honolulu, Victoria and Vancouver. Her brightly embellished passenger list contained the names of 154 women, while the men could muster but a moderate 112. On her Easter trip the Aorangi carried 300 women in a passenger complement of 400. ARRANGING THE TRIP The Aorangi is not an isolated illustration. The luxurious new motorliner Rangitiki, which called at Auckland early this month on her first voyage from the Old Country, and then visited Wellington, took from New Zealand a happy band of 122 women. The male list just touched 60. The name Niagara, too, must surely be a household word in many Auckland homes. Ships’ names, in fact, are as well known to many housewives as is their favourite brand of baking powder. This ship left here a few days ago and carried a modest 93 first-class passengers, 53 of whom were women.

Just how these holidays are arranged is the most difficult investigation the shipping statistician can be called upon to undertake. Some of them, of course, are fixed after persistent persuasion within the family circle. The business man with a moderate income and a reasonable

standard of comfort knows quite well the effect of moral pressure from his wife and grown-up daughters. On the other hand, a leading social woman explains, many of the overseas trips are the result of the husband's suggestion in the first place, quickly fanned into reality as the season in the Northern Hemisphere draws close. Subtlety—that effective weapon of the judicious woman —plays its part. The seed is sown in the husband's mind when the wife of a business contemporary has booked her passage; time and an occasional reminder accomplish the rest.

In a less degree the tendency of women to travel more than men is noted in the trans-Tasman run to Sydney and Melbourne. In the Maunganui’s complement on Friday, May 24, women outnumbered the men, and a similar result is shown by a study of the Manuka's list from Wellington to Sydney a week or two ago. GIRL TRIPPERS Now let us glance along the queue at the overseas shipping agents’ office. Not all of those trim little women are the wives of big business men. The school teacher, the office girl, the independent bachelor girl. are sprinkled here and there. Many of those blue slips of paper represent months —sometimes years—of hard saving. It might represent a clean sweep of a moderate bank account. It often does.

Why is it? Mr. Business will say he can better afford to send his wife and daughter abroad than go himself. In any case, women have more leisure, he will add. Mrs. Business says women earn their holidays, and, having earned them, intend to have them —with or without husbands. Miss Typiste says: “It would be perfectly gorgeous to go abroad.” And she goes! A great many women accompany their husbands on the boats. But a survey of the boat rail of any out-ward-bound passenger ship from Auckland—the Marama for Sydney yesterday, for example—will show amid the fairyland of streamers and myriads of bouquets more trim ankles and pretty faces of Auckland’s girls than the thoughtful countenances of its men.