City Missioner

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 360, 17 May 1946, Page 6

City Missioner

ASSUMING that the opinions of a man for’ whom groups of women work regularly (for no pay whatever) would be interesting, we asked the Rev. Harry Squires, Wellington City Missioner, what he thought about the subject. (The women referred to assist the mission funds by holding jumble sales.) "T would add to equal pay for equal 999 work, ‘equal responsibility’," he said.

We asked him to amplify that a little. "What I mean is this: Along with equal pay women must and can accept the same amount of responsibility. We saw how that worked in the Forces where they did important work, very often not under the direction of men but of wamen. Of course, employers in a good many instances, prefer men for their strength and suitability for certain types of work. "But it often suits an employer to have a woman doing the same job as a man does because, under present conditions, she is paid less and so absorbs less of the profits. And yet goods produced by women are no cheaper than those made by men. "Then there is the other side of the question. A man is supposed, popularly, to be the head of the house. Whether he is or not is another matter-I know plenty who are not. But he is looked on as the breadwinner and protector. If a woman says, bluntly: ‘I get just as much as my husband,’ how do we get on then? Will she want to be bothered with homelife and child-rearing, and will homes be broken up? I don’t know; but I come back to what I said in the first place, that there must be equal responsibility if there is to be equal pay."