FRENCH WOMEN

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21280, 26 November 1940, Page 7

FRENCH WOMEN

ORDERS FROM VICHY “GO HOME, MADAME! H MORE CHILDREN WANTED (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, September 14. A letter has just reached me here in London from a French family I knew well, writes Walter Farf in the Daily Mail. It says:— “The farqily is still completely scattered all over France. We don’t know even now which of us are killed, which are missing. “Those of our menfolk who have come back can’t get jobs. The small income I [that’s the grandmother of the family] had now amounts to nothing at all because of the rise in prices. No money, no work; that’s our trouble. Heaven knows when things will change for the better.” Before the war this family was quite well off. They had bought a house for their eldest son to settle down in with his young wife. The house was at Mentone and was destroyed by Italian bombs. . The husband, before the war, had a big job in the French cloth industry. Now the industry is under German control. He is penniless. It is in this sort of atmosphere that the Petain Government are asking the women of France to go back to the home, to forget about wageearning, and to think more about having children. In a pronouncement issued to the French press the Government say: “French women have become too flippant in their attitude towards marriage and home life. They must be made to realise that a woman’s business is to have children—not to poke her nose into public affairs. No More Latin “The girls in our schools must be encouraged not to learn such things as Latin and mathematics; they must concentrate solely on mothercraft, housework, learning how to cook good meals cheaply.” The pronouncement adds: “The organisation of athletics in which girls compete against each other must be stopped.” For years before this war started French women were struggling to get the same sort of rights that English women have. They staged demonstrations all over France, on race courses, in the Rue de la Paix, in front of the private houses of deputies and senators, protesting against the rules laid down in Napoleon’s Code and still in force which say that a woman in France shall not be allowed her own banking account, shall not vote, shall be compelled to ask for her husband’s written consent even for such things as obtaining a passport. Falling Birth-rate The Petain Government, according to the latest speeches of their Ministers and the interviews they have given in the press, want to bind women down under a new set of rules, if anything, worse than the ones framed in Napoleon’s time. Petain’s men say quite bluntly: “Women must npt presume to be capable of taking on executive jobs or professional work. They must not be allowed to train as engineers and for work of that kind. “They must get out of their heads the idea that they are potential wageearners. . . .” No French woman doubts the need for bigger families. The French birth-rate, which was very low before the war began, is now plunging to even lower levels. Since the last war there have been 20,000 divorces a year in France, and the divorce rate is still increasing. Financial and housing conditions have made France a nation of small families. Many a village in the French provinces where there were, say, 3000 inhabitants 40 years ago, now has fewer than 1000 inhabitants. Two wars in a quarter of a century have taken toll of nearly 2,000,000 Frenchmen. Family Bonuses Just before war broke out a campaign was begun to increase the number of babies in France by making special allowances for big families Mothers were given “bonuses'* if they stayed at home and did not take any other job except looking after the home. In the “marriage book” issued to every French woman after the wedding ceremony was space for the registration of 12 children, with detailed instructions about how to bring up a family. But defeat has crushed this campaign. Couples who had big families, relying on getting generous national allowances, now find that the fall in the Value of the franc has made it difficult for them to pay their way. French women are shrewd and many of them are good organisers, iney have shown up well in this war, despite their nation’s defeat. They are still in fighting mood. They claim that they now have still greater right to the vote and to freedom than before. And they ask, pertinently, how they will be able to keep these children that Vichy wants, where the money is coming from, and what sort of country they will find when they grow up.