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Show : AUSTRALIAN MARRlAGI 9 MARK FT A Too Many (I iris Some Cannot W& Find Opportunity to Enter sj2 The Marriage Slate. A ' I or the fust time in the history k (Continued on pae 6.) fl SBj flSJ - " AUSTRALIAN MAURI AE MARKET. (Continued from first pajre.) of Australia the males are in a minority, the latest figures being 2,401,000 males ami 2,474,000 females. fe-males. What, then, is to become of our girls? Is the outlook bright or cheerless; Most young women look forward to entering the mar-, tied state. But. alas! it seems tint fate has closed the' door to matrimony matri-mony upon a number of Australian Australi-an women, as it has done to so many in the countries of Kurope stricken by the war. There arc some distilled to live alone, to miss the joys of motherhood, to lack the protection of a man', strong arm in the Struggle of life-, and this from no other fault of theit OWtt, but simply because they are the victims of cin umstBJtl t . Hovv many must remain spinsters spins-ters cannot be said exactly, for several sev-eral Influences may affect the total. Though the preponderance of females fe-males throughout Australia is, roughly. 73,(XK). it must be remem bered that the total of males has been reduced by enlistments. Altogether Al-together 362,000 have Joined the Expeditionary Forces, but a large proportion oi" that number have not yet left Australia, or have re turned, and those in Australia would be counted in the total male population. Many of those who have gone have married or will marry English girls, whose charms have smitten the Australian soldiers. sol-diers. It is not at all out of the natural order of things that men should be attracted by the pretty Kirls who have lionised them in England. The soldiers arc not to blame, nor. perhaps, are the English Eng-lish la-ses who marry then but many an Australian girl is given I cross to bear. So, many a handsome hand-some young bachelor who left these shores heart whole will come back a Benedict, and many a fine Australian girl will see her place usurped by a pink cheeked lassie from Lancashire or a maid of Kent. Then the men who fall gloriously glor-iously in battle leave lonely hearts in Australia, saddened by a mem OH and the thoughts of what might have been. The pity of it only the women fully know. And in Australia many men will con tinue to live, as they have lived in the past, a bachelor existence. In South Australia alone there are 2,-347 2,-347 unmarried men between the age of 40 and 45. Twenty-seven per cent, of the unmarried males in South Australia, or a total of 36,380, are between the ages of 2) and 45, and there are 37,980 unmarried un-married females between the ages of 18 and 40. Then- are 2$20 spinsters between the ages of 35 and 40. The inferenc e s that the 2.347 old bachelors will remain so. and nearly all the 2.K20 spinsters will pass through life without a mate. Of the 37,980 females above mentioned, many must, like the I Iero. await the coming of l.eander Most of the men who have gone were single and of marriageable age, thus the proportion of reduction reduc-tion of marriageable males is far greater than the proportion of males who have enlisted to the total to-tal male population. In Victoria and New South Wales the female! outnumber the males. hat, then, is Ki become of the women from whom the orange blossom is withheld. with-held. Many are becoming proficient profic-ient in employment that women previously pre-viously seldom undertook. Statis tics published by the director of Education in New South Wale show that nearly half the number of girls leaving school engage in home duties, but about a quarter seek higher education apparently with the object, in the main, of entering en-tering comercial or banking offices. In this sphere many women are earning such good salaries that if they do not marry they can, at all events, provide for themselves. There are no figures in South Australia Aus-tralia to indicate what lines of employment em-ployment girls enter after leaving school. |
