OCR Text |
Show Woman's Place in Home? ! Well, Not Absolutely Some of the other facts In "Women and Wealth": In 1,600 representative Illinois factories fac-tories women earned 59 per cent of the wage paid to men. In New York state it was 54 per cent. Of 10,632,227 women over fifteen years of age gainfully employed in 1930, 2S.9 per cent were married. The average weekly salary paid to women factory workers In Mississippi Mississip-pi in 1928 was $8.29 and In Rhode Island $16.36. Miss Branch concluded her study with the prediction that the economic status of women will continue to improve, im-prove, that legal discrimination against women will cease, and that perhaps the Increased expenditure of all wealth by women will contribute toward building a better social and economic order. Those who seek to refute man's contention that "the place of women Is In the home" have plenty of arguments argu-ments to present today. They can say that: "Thirty-eight per cent of the $9,000,000,000 of Income reported to the federal government in 1928 was received by women. "Seventy-seven thousand women had an annual income of over $5,000, the average being $19,129. "Of the 18,000,000 stockholders In the United States, 7,740,000, are women. - "Women are beneficiaries of 80 per cent of life Insurance outstanding. "Women represent 80 per cent of consumer buying power. "Before the depression the average weekly salary of professional and business women In New York city was $58." These facts about women were gathered in a research project undertaken under-taken by Mary Sydney Branch, Instructor In-structor In economics at Western college, col-lege, Oxford, Ohio, and fellow at the University of Chicago, for the Chl-Omega Chl-Omega Sorority. Her findings, with complete satls-tlcal satls-tlcal reports, were published by the University of Chicago Press under the title, "Women and wealth." Miss Branch, In presenting her study of women as taxpayers, owners own-ers of property, gainfully employed workers, and as managers of the family Income, briefly traced the progress of women's rights and economic eco-nomic position. "Several generations ago," she said, "a woman's economic position, before the law, was little better than that of a child, a slave, or a lunatic." Single women couldn't hold office and married women couldn't manage their own property. Even today. Miss Branch related, some legal discriminations still remain. re-main. In 27 states the right of Jury service Is withheld, In three states the husband can take his wife's wages and in some states a woman cannot go into business without consent con-sent of her husband. |