WOMEN TEACHERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 920, 13 March 1930, Page 8

WOMEN TEACHERS

EMPLOYMENT AFTER MARRIAGE SCHOOL COMMITTEES OBJECT When women marry, they should automatically cease to be employed as teachers, is the opinion expressed in an article in the current number of the “School Committee Journal,*’ the official organ of the Auckland Primary School Committees’ Association. The journal says: “Where married women are employed by private individuals or are working for themselves, there is no necessity to restrict their work, but j when they are employed by the State it is reasonable and right to consider their employment from quite a dif- | ferent standpoint. No one will dis- ; pute the right of a farmer’s wife to i assist her husband in their joint unj dertaking, and it is perfectly legitimate that a woman should assist her husband in -the management of his business. I*t is even quite in order that a private individual should employ married women in preference* to single, in these cases, the individual infringes no rights, but when the State employs married women, the case is entirely different. “No one would deny to a married woman teacher, who through unfortunate circumstances, is forced to be the breadwinner, the full right of employment in the State schools, but every one must deprecate the employment of the married woman who has no necessity to teach, the right to such employment, and the time has undoubtedly arrived when women teachers marrying should automatically cease to be employed as teachers. This would entail no hardship, it being Reasonable to suppose that the lady teachers who are contemplating matrimony, would conconsider well whether the step is in their own interest. “Surely, it was never intended that women should marry and continue to support themselves, and if some have this idea, the State, as the employer, should not encourage it. “There is no doubt, on this question, women teachers generally are strongly against the employment of mairied women, whose husbands can provide for them, and it is difficult to understand why the system has been allowed to become so general, undoubtedly it should be altered and that without delay.”