CORRESPONDENCE. WOMEN AND HOTELS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 June 1922, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

WOMEN AND HOTELS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —It seems a generally accepted principle that women should not frequent hotels and hotel bars for drinking purposes. But why? These are days of equality, and at least equality of opportunity, for all. This exclusion of women is a relic of the days of privilege. We exclude women, or pretend to exclude them, from behind the bars, which makes more work for barmen. Now they are to be kept from the other side of the bar as customers. If the former exclusion be right, then the later must be right, too. Again, one might ask: Why? The reason is plain. The article dispensed at the bar is risky, to say the least of it, both for the dispenser and for the consumer. The S.M. at Christchurch says that “licensees must discourage the custom as much as possible,” and, of course, licensees will fall in with that suggestion, though it may be rather hard on the women. Notwithstanding that every reason why men should congregate and drink at hotel bars also applies to women having the same appetite, yet people say they don’t like to see women there. It seems that it is time the whole position was reviewed. Let the men ask themselves whether they get benefit or damage from their alcoholic habits; and, if it be bad for the women,'they ought to abstain for the sake of the weaker sex.—l am, etc., G. H. M.