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
education--_i.e._, a University degree plus technical qualifications,
rather than a teaching diploma in Domestic Subjects plus a little
science. There is, then, likely to be an increasing number of openings
for women who can afford the double training. Schools of housecraft
to give all-round training to educated women, are springing up in
all parts of the United Kingdom: in those which are attached to
Polytechnics and similar institutions the fullest advantage is
taken of the pure and technical science teaching available in their
laboratories.
To those who look for a real advance in household science the weak
point of the present situation is the want of proper correlation and
standardisation of the work going on. The Board of Education does not
examine; it accepts the diploma given by any one of a fairly large
number of domestic science schools. In consequence, teachers from
different quarters may be using quite different processes and methods
in laundry work, cooking, or housekeeping. It is time some fundamental
things were agreed upon, and although standardising must not be
allowed to become stereotyping, at present constructive generalisation
is needed, as well as the upsetting of out-grown traditions. In this
context it would be well to discuss a question more properly to be
taken at the end of this paper--the connection between the teaching in
elementary schools and that in secondary schools. There is no reason
to introduce differentiation in the training of the teachers: it
is obvious, for instance, that the recent development of including
economics in that training, is of extraordinary value to the
elementary school teacher. But it is difficult to correlate the
instruction given in the management of a middle-class household, with
from eight to twenty rooms, and from one to a dozen servants, with
that given in the management of a workman's cottage or of a flat
without assistance. The connection which does need systematising and
establishing is between the management of a middle-class house and the
training of domestic servants, which ought naturally to form part of
the trade or technical after-school work for elementary scholars. Here
again, if training is to be followed by certificates, and the
domestic servant is to be in the smallest degree an expert, some
standardisation of training is necessary. We may, of course, find that
domestic service becomes so much a matter of expert work that it is
taken up on a large scale by middle-class girls, but that can
hardly be prophesied yet, although the "lady servant" is an existing
phenomenon. It is, of course, also possible that a modern curriculum
of "Household and Social Science" may attract a certain number of
men of the suitable type of mind. The attitude of the community is
changing so rapidly that one may hope those fears to be groundless
which speak of "relegating women back to the limited sphere of
domesticity," and thereby losing so much that has been gained with
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