While The Kettle Boils

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 61, 23 August 1940, Page 42

While The Kettle Boils

Dear Friends. We read of the progress of science, machinery, and other branches of endeavour over the past century. But more amazing still is the march of feminine progress. Fifty years ago a feminist was an unknown term in the English Dictionary. For a woman of that era to go out and take a job would have been considered unladylike. Then came _ the Suffragette movement-like all new movements, running to the extreme and inviting ridicule rather than respect. But at the Suffragette battle cry, the world of women stirred. Gradually the old order: began to weaken. Woman stretched her arms out and felt her power. The last war completed woman’s emancipation-for it became a necessity rather than a political desire for women to come forward and "do their bit." Well, we have gone on from there. Last year an illuminating table of figures was compiled by an English writer. To-day, Woman sits at executive desks, officiates in operating theatres and at legal bars. She designs clothes, stagesets, advertising lay-outs, and airplanes, She decorates, runs shops, factories, magazines, and a myriad types of business. She teaches, applies herself to scientific research in laboratories. In Britain alone, the number of women workers has risen in the last ten years by 600,000. There are now as many women as men employed as shop assistants. Nearly half the clerical work in Britain is done by women. There are only 5,000 male typists as against 212,000 women. In America the figures are still more impressive. One in every four workers over there is a woman. In all they have 2,000,000 women office workers — outnumbering the men by 200,000. There are 700,000 saleswomen, 113,000 women hairdressers, 60,000 hotel keepers, and 3,500 women clergy. Both in England and America 95% of all telephones and typewriters are operated by women, and 65% of bookkeepers and cashiers are Eves. They do not, however, restrict their labours to the gentler trades or professions. In England, the women seem to have solved for themselves the burning ques-tion-should women work after marriage? Half a million of them do. Out of 180,000 women teachers, 17,000 are married. There are 4,000 nurses, 2,700 actresses, and 2,900 musicians or music teachers who have already promised to love, honour and obey. Since the start of this present war, many of these figures must have in- creased-and new niches have been made out of the necessity of the moment. We have gone a long way in a brief fifty years. Yours cordially,

Cynthia