SURPLUS WOMEN PROBLEM.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 September 1921, Page 5

SURPLUS WOMEN PROBLEM.

ABSORPTION BY DOMINIONS. London, August 28. Discussing whether a system of Empire emigration offers a solution of the problem of Great Britain’s surplus women, a special correspondent of the Times dispels the popular belief that the males in the Dominions greatly outnumber the females.

Examining Australian statistics, he points out that, part from the direct action of the Avar, there is a steady, persistent filling up of the gap which hitherto existed, as shown by a comparison of the census returns of 1901 and 1921.

The latter, he says, reveal a severely marked decline in the actual preponderance of men, as well as in regard to the ratio. Probably the excess of marriageable males in the whole Commonwealth does not exceed 50,000, which, combined with the curiously uneven distribution of the sexes in the different States, and taken in conjunction with the restriction of the preponderance to the thinly populated, remote areas, causes the writer to declare that Australia’s capacity to absorb the surplus women of the United Kingdom is extremely limited. An examination of New Zealand and Canadian statistics, adds the writer, leads to a similar conclusion. In any case the capacity to absorb is mainly restricted to pioneer areas, for which young Englishwomen are not particularly suited by training and environment.