We Finish Looking

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 465, 21 May 1948, Page 14

We Finish Looking

MBS. LOIS SUCKLING’S J talk "Women in Business" provided a militant finale to the memorable series Let’s Look at Ourselves, from which listeners to 2YA have received so much intellectual nourishment. Proceeding allegretto vivace Mrs. Suckling covered a large plot of ground in something under the usual 15 minutes, a technique

nicely in keeping with her exhortation to listeners to "give up the idea that women are news." Actually we appear to be in no danger of doing so, since 2YA has now embarked on a series of talks by Mrs. Williams-Ellis on The Art of Being a Woman, and personally I hope that we never do, since there is nothing more enjoyable than forming the topic of conyersation (men are said

to have the same weakness, hence the success of the let-him-talk-about-himself technique) especially when, as in the case of a radio talk, the speaker may be bracing (as Mrs. Suckling) but can never be downright rude. I enjoyed meeting Grandmother, and felt sorry that she was not entirely satisfied with the present position of women in the business world, as viewed in the light of the high hopes indulged in by her own generation. But I felt that both Grandmother and the speaker, eyeing only the exploited among women in business, tended to take a gloomier view of the position than would have been warranted had they also considered the large number of women who run businesses of their own, to whom the prin ciple of equal pay for equal work cers tainly does apply. Contrariwise it was perhaps optimistic to assume that if sufficient community services are available to enable women to continue paid employment after marriage, that great argument against women in businesstheir impermanence-would be invalid, since I feel sure that women in general are intelligent enough to prefer the life of delicious leisure which community services allied to domesticity can give them to the privilege of permanence in office, factory, or shop.