By George MacManus
'GRACIOUS-IM 60 TIRED-T MUST TAKE A TAXI HOME-
OH-ME-IT'S GRAND TO GET HOME AND JUST RELAX-1 AM REALLY ALL IN-
?
COME ON – MAGGIE GET YOUR THINGS
ON-WE'RE GONG
TO THE OPERA-
A PAGE FOR WOMEN WOMEN in the New Britain.. They need freedom and equality
WHAT
women are beginning
to ask themselves, have they got to look forward thr, once the war is over!
The very question is part of the mood of victory Yet before one tries to answer it, if a salutary to glance at what is at stake.
For women, everything in at stake, even then right to regard themselves as human beings, with souls and mind. and hearts of The wIE.
Wherever the Swastika flus. women are degraded, In longer citizen and commades. will men. but mere bes 1s of burden and breeders of cantion folder Free- dum ether to think of to levl of to beheve is demed therm
Woe to any gal whose heart goes out to a "non-Aiyan " Woe to any mother who seeks to mould her children to any ideal of her 019222 Woe to any woman whose conscience rejects the worship of the dominant and brutal State
The bombs that drop on civil- ians rather than on soldiers are logically directed. The Best Nazi target is the woman in the home.
Women see this They are giv- ing all they have to winning the war. just as men are, Tremend- ous have been the calls on their courage and endurance.
Invasion, if it comes will be a yet greater call and first on them. They will meet it. Endurance has, too, been backed up by energetic action, in every service to which they have been summoned.
They rejoice that the full call to work is at last sent out to them.
Called in this war to equal
service, women are much nearer the equal treatment than they were In 1914-18.
relatively far below those of the men whose work they were doing and whose places they were fill ing.
In many industries. Indeed, the war-time employment of women was used us a means of pulling down normal rates and lowering post-war wages,
difference is, of course,
The They are, however,
on which the home depends, whɔ- ever earns it, is enough to cover the expenses of a family on a humane and decent standard.
to
The woman who is compelled. as so many are, to go out work at the very stage in her life when young children most need her care, is not free; nor is her husband.
Hamiltonly. Whether or no, two points
By Mary Agnes Hamilton
A member of Arthur Greenwood's Reconstruc- tion Ministry; Labour M.P. for Blackburn, 1929-31; Delegate to the League of Nations Assembly; ex- Governor of the B.B.C.; Alderman of the London County Council; Novelist and Biographer.
by no means there yet.
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minds to making its conditions than half a million houses short well be that a State such as to give millions of crafts- even of clearing away slums; and It may
chance to system of family allowances is women the
exercise immeasurably further short (quite required, to meet this situation their human skill.
apart from air raid damage and They will, of course, do it all destruction) of providing every clear: the interests of wo- the better if they are given free- family with the sort of-house that
can be made into a home. man and man are at one in de-dom of choice as to whether or manding that wages are fixed on not it is the job for which they
Among the the basis of the job, and not on are fitted, and if we, as the com- of our present social system none many absurdities the sex of the worker who hap-munity, recognise how vitally im-
is more glaring than that fact pens to do it-in end, once and for portant their craft is to our enthat the thorough application of
rates" and "wo-tire purpose, all, of "men's men's rutes"-and that the basic wage is set at a living rate,
Some would say that, as a con- sequence, fewer women would be employed. If so, they are, in effect, saying that women are, in fact, now employed because they are cheap and not because they are competent.
mainly due to the greater strength Political equality has not of Trade Unionism, and to the brought economic equality, yet. fact that it stands solid for the Women in the Auxiliary Services, rate for the job as the means of as in Civil Defence, are not paid safeguarding, the common inter- Actually, women are to-day men's rates.
competent at A When they are in- ests of men and women.
vast proving jured, or their homes destroyed Two great Unions--the Na-
that need doing. runge of jobs by enemy action, their compensational Union of General and Muni- and which they did not do before. tion rates are lower,
elpal Workers and the Transport
10
In Industry, on the other hand, and General Workers have led their position is far better than it the fight for equal treatment for was in the last war. Thanks to substlluted women. Each covers We shall be rich or poor, after Trade Union action and the pow-a considerable women's member- the war, in proportion as we all erful stand of Mr. Ernest Bevin, | ship.
work. What the establishment of their working conditions, hours If what has been won by their a living rate for the job does and general welfare have been efforts and by those of the other safeguarded from the first.
Unions is to be maintained, work- The factory Code is maintained. ing women must join up in far Health is cared for. Moreover, greater numbers.
mainly mean is that women will, at last, be given the chance to do well, because under good con- ditions, the great job of home- keeping.
a
in at least three great lines of If women displace men simply employment, women doing men's because they are cheaper, they After all,: "gainful employment" work are being paid men's rates. at once pull down the wage rates is not the only kind of work that In the Munitions industry, in of men and condemn themselves adds to the real wealth of the Transport and in Boots and Shoes. to miserable conditions. If. on the community The endless and in- Trade Union effort has won for other hand, they stand firm on dispensable worker of malding. women doing work normally done the rate for the job they serve house into a home is the point of by men the same wage rates, the common cause of all who work the entire effort bonus and cost of living addition, to live. as would have been earned by the men whom they replace,'
* ✡ 翱
*
We all work, in order to make. a homes foxe all of us, the houra No doubt, as in 1918, the bulk we spend there are our best, and of the women now doing war work the reason and justification of the This was not the case in the last of whatever kind will, once the others, Those on whom the doing. war. To the end, the great ma- war is over, go back to their of that job, depends will always, jority, of women war workers, al- homes and work there. On that, be the pillars of the community. though many of them were better it is their right to have freedom It is more than time that this, paid than they had been before, of choice. They can only have essential work was recognised were on rates absolutely, low, and that freedom if the normal, wage, us such, and that we set our
101
W
The home makers have a right to houses that make their task possible. We are, as it is. more
The Ball Bynakita, Idu
When her beau "òxclaimed his.life was crowded with last- minute detail the mentally sketchy girl-friend advised him to get,jan alarm clock.
science and knowledge to the house is, at present, in the main, confined to the dwellings of the relatively well-to-do.
Seldom does the unpaid home maker enjoy the luxuries of labour-saving devices; the chromium
and ör bakelite tap sink: the well-planned conveni- ent kitchen win everything, to hand; the ample. cupboard and central heating arrangements,
Yet it is they who need these things; we must and can provide them.
REACH THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD TO BUY THROUGH
"The China Mail”
THE PAPER THAT GETS
INTO THE HOME":
st with