REHABILITATION OF WOMEN.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 236, 31 December 1943, Unnumbered Page

REHABILITATION OF WOMEN.

Sir,-After reading your interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Baker it occurred to me that I have read or heard little of the plans of the Rehabilitation Board for dealing with ex-ser-vicewomen. Certainly the R.S.A. and the Home Services’ Association have made it clear that their organisations are open to women as well as men, but that appears to be as much as has been done. I have never belonged to any one of the services, but my work has brought me into contact with women in every branch and one of the most noticeable, and most serious of the difficulties in this connection is that most of them seem unaware that any problem of rehabilitation will exist for them. The very fact that so many women enjoy service life would seem to indicate a desire to escape from the monotonous realities of their previous existencewhich is not so much a reflection upon them as upon that existence conventionally expected of New Zealand women-but they have formed no definite plan of making constructive future use of the knowledge, if any, which they have acquired during the war. Do the authorities assume that all these women will display meek gratitude at being permitted to return to their former spheres, usually all too narrow, until they slide into the "proper" status of wife and mother? Having made a brief excursion into what has in the past been erroneously regarded as exclusively male territory, most women, consciously or unconsciously, will resent any attempts which may force them to forgo their newly-found approach to genuine equality.

JUANITA

(Morrinsville).