Women Workers in Seven Professions: A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects
General
Women Workers in Seven Professions: A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects
Vocational guidance; Women -- Employment -- Great Britain
The duties of the Women Inspectors in connection with the boarding-out
of Poor Law Children include the visiting of officials of Boarding-Out
Committees, and of homes in which children are boarded out; the
Inspector visits a sufficient number of children and homes to enable
her to satisfy herself that the duties of the Boarding-Out Committee
are carried out in a satisfactory manner, and makes a report to the
Board thereon. Women Inspectors arrange their own inspections of
boarded-out children within a prescribed district.
Each of the fourteen districts into which the country is divided for
Poor Law purposes is placed under the care of a General Inspector
(male), whilst the half dozen Women Inspectors are available for
duty in these districts, but only at the invitation of the General
Inspector. If an Inspector omits to arrange for these visits it is
possible for his district to remain unvisited by a Woman Inspector for
an indefinite period. When it is remembered that there are still
194 Unions without a woman on the Board of Guardians, the present
arrangement, by which the Women Inspectors can only inspect Poor Law
Institutions on sufferance, is seen to be indefensible and the need
for reform in this direction urgent.
There is one Assistant Woman Inspector, who is a highly qualified
medical woman, in the Public Health Department of the Board. She has
been in office only a few months, but it has been remarked in more
than one quarter that the enhanced value of the recent report of
the Board's Medical Officer on Infant Mortality is due to her
co-operation.
The jurisdiction of the Local Government Board in London is confined
to England and Wales--Scotland and Ireland having their own Boards in
Edinburgh and Dublin respectively.
The Local Government Board for Scotland appointed a Woman Inspector
for the first time about three years ago, at a salary of £200 a year.
She is a fully qualified medical woman. Her duties include both Poor
Law Work (_e.g._ the inspection of children in poor-houses or boarded
out, enquiries into complaints of inadequate relief to widows) and
Public Health Work (_e.g._ enquiries into any special incidence of
disease).
The Local Government Board for Ireland employs two Women Inspectors,
one at a salary of £200-10-£300 and the other at a salary of £200, to
inspect boarded-out children.
There are no prescribed qualifications for these posts; but they
have always been, and still are, held by highly qualified
women--distinguished graduates and experienced in social work; one is
a doctor of medicine.
Sir Henry Robinson, Vice-President of the Local Government Board for
Ireland, said in his evidence before the Royal Commission on the Civil
Service that he would like to have one or two women doctors to go
round the work-houses and to visit the female wards, but the salaries
offered by the Treasury to women doctors seemed to him too low to
attract well qualified women.
_The Home Office_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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