UNIVERSITY SENATE AND MATRICULATION EXAM.

White Ribbon, Volume 22, Issue 260, 19 February 1917, Page 9

UNIVERSITY SENATE AND MATRICULATION EXAM.

We notice that the august body named above have parsed a regulation that all girl candidates for tin* Matriculation examination must present a certificate that they have had a course of training in domestic science. We should have expected from the Senate something more reasonable and logical than this. Why handicap only the girl candidates for Matri<. ? Win handicap only girls who are sitting for Matric.? Does the Senate w sh to make domestic science compulsory for girls? If so, they can only do this by getting Government to make it compulsory for every girl, before she is allowed to go to work, to show her employer a certificate of proficiency in domestic economy. The Matric. is the entrance examination to the learned professions. Therefore only the girls who contemplate entering these professions are to be handicapp d. Evidently girls who go to factories, shops, offices, dressmaking, etc., are not to be compelled to learn domesti< science. What a farce to impose this only on girls who go up for Matric. We wonder is it done to give the boy a better chance. It looks as if the learned Senate fear that in the medical and other professions girls will outstrip boys, and so to give the boy a better chance they handicap the girl by making her devote time to an extra subject. Why not compel the boy to take a course of carpentering or

gardening before he is allowed to sit for the entrance examination to our University. On behalf of our Union, the President wired to the Chancellor against thU restriction being imposed upon girl candidates for Matric. As we have said before, we do not believe in sex differentiation in education. I.et every’ boy and every girl also be free to take* up any course of study he or she ability for. Why force the girl who has ability and in< lination tfl qualify as a Doctor of Medicine or of Music to take up domestic science? The probability is that if she makes good in her profession she will earn enough to pay somebody to cook and housekeep for her. How men, even a University Senate, cling to the belief that all women must be cooks and housekeepers. Where would our nation be now if the brave women of the past had not fought the battle for equality of opportunity in educ «it:on ? The nation is now dependent upon its women for many things beside housekeeping. Bad would it be for the nation if its women were only housekeepers, and nothing else. Worse would it be for those women who, after learning to housekeep, can do nothing but wait for some man to come along and provide the house for them to keep.