HOUSEWIVES ARE HUMAN
Sir,-I sympathise with S. J. Strong, who does not care for verse mixed with her potato peelings. But my plaint is this: why have sessions for women at all? Housekeeping is housekeeping and art is art, and why mix the lot in an unholy jumble of Help for the Home Cook, What Poetry Means to Me, and Choosing a Camping Site? Women are human beings, with a human being’s diversity of interests. Why not take it for granted that they appreciate any intelligent discussion, whether by men or women, at any hour of the day? Certainly have.talks on housekeeping, and take it as read that they interest those of us who keep house-a report of a football match isn’t announced as being For the Gentlemen, bless them, or Mainly for the Males. But seriously, this isn’t as trivial as it may appear. There’s a movement on foot among- women’s organisations to agitate for women members in Parliament to represent women only. This is hailed as the most revolutionary proposal since women’s suffrage. But such an accomplishment would be disastrous. We would end with a nation of men and a nation of women, civil war, and segregation of the sexes. So please couldn’t we have sessions of football, of jam-making, of art in all its phases, of child-welfare, of boxing and The Lilian Dale Affair-in short, -sessions not for women or for men, but for human beings?
RUTH
FRANCE
(Christchurch),
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 547, 16 December 1949, Page 5
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242HOUSEWIVES ARE HUMAN New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 547, 16 December 1949, Page 5
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