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Page 3 A. EARLY DAYS - THE TIMES OF VIDA GOLDSTEIN
15-21 on this page
15. 1912 EQUAL PAY FOR TEACHERS BETRAYAL
The Question of Equal Pay for Equal Work in the Department of Instruction - G. C. Morrison (the Commissioner) was strongly against boys being placed under the tutelage of women, being concerned about “her unconsciously destructive influence on the masculine character of the boy”.
He said he was also concerned about a possible preponderance of women teachers if women achieved anything like equal pay, leading to a situation similar to America where women teachers were paid 75% of the male wage:
"The boy in America is not being brought up to punch another boy's head or to stand having his own punched in a healthy and proper manner"
Report by the Public Service Commissioner (No. 8) 1914 V2 1st Session 353 Index to Vic. Parl. papers 1901-49
16. THE WOMEN'S POLITICAL ASSOCIATION SUPPORTED THE TEACHERS
We intend to give immediate support to the women State School Teachers in their reform, and we ask our members to study carefully the following circular sent out by the Lady Teachers' Association to the members of the Legislative Assembly, and to make its contents known in every society with which they are connected and amongst their acquaintances.
Woman Voter Oct 9 1912 University of Melbourne
Our Association wishes to bring under the notices of Hon. Members the very unfair treatment the women teachers are receiving under the scheme of salaries proposed by the Government for men only ...
Clara Weekes, President Lady Teachers’ Association Woman Voter 14 Sep 1912 University of Melbourne
17. 1913 LADY TEACHERS’ ASSOCIATION RESOLUTION
The Lady Teachers' Association passed the following resolution on the 14th instant.
"That this association demands from a democratic government equal pay for equal work, that women of twenty years’ experience should no longer be humiliated by receiving a salary of 110 pounds or less, with no hope of receiving more, however long they may remain in the service, while young men of no experience receive 120 pounds and can reach automatically 200 pounds in nine years."
Woman Voter March 18 1913 University of Melbourne
18. THE CLERKS’ WAGES BOARD DETERMINATION
After many months of the most detailed examination of the conditions under which clerks and typists work, the Clerks' Wages Board declared equal pay…
19. EMPLOYERS BETRAYAL
When outside employers saw how things were going they set to work to create a panic amongst the women employers, telling them they would all be thrown out of employment, and that men would be taken on instead…
Harrowing tales were told of qualified women losing their employment. Young girls scarcely out of Business Colleges were organised into a Lady Typists' Association, and waited on the Minister, urging that 45/- should not be paid until after six years’ experience – Six years before one could demand the miserable wage of 45/- for highly skilled nerve-racking work!
The Minister yielded. The case for equal pay was entrusted to Mr Arthur, and we regret to say it was most lamentably presented. Every fresh experience we have of women's interests being left to the second-hand knowledge of men, well-meaning as they usually are, shows us the futility of the practice.
Wherever women's interests are at stake qualified women must be there to protect them.
Men who believe thoroughly in the justice of equal pay do not know how to meet the specious arguments of those who oppose it ...
The judge was also influenced by Mr Justice Higgins' unsound judgements about women's work in the Mildura fruit award, but he outrivalled Mr Higgins in his peculiar reasoning on the subject ...
Woman Voter March 18 1913 State Library of Victoria
20. 1914 TEACHERS’ EQUAL PAY CLAIM BETRAYAL
In 1914 the Victorian Lady Teachers' Association applied for equal pay, only to be told in detail why their work was not equal to that of male teachers, and that the cost of living was less for women, anyway!
Megan McMurphy, Margot Oliver, Jeni Thornley For Love or Money a pictorial history of women and work in Australia Penguin 1981
Monster Meeting - Equal Pay for Equal Work
Thursday July 31st at 8pm in the Auditorium, Collins St. Admission Free. Collection.
Woman Voter July 15 1913
21. 1914 WAR – “THE WICKED WASTE OF LIFE” BETRAYAL
War is out of date. Under modern conditions it cannot accomplish what those who support war want it to accomplish. Every deadly weapon is met with the invention of a still more deadly weapon ... We must aim at changing our social and industrial system so as to produce for use and not for profit.
Vida Goldstein
The policy of huge armaments which made war inevitable, and rendered it so dreadful when it came, was dictated by an International Ring of Armament firms under the direction of prominent and all-powerful statesmen and financiers who control parliaments, governments and the press.
The Woman Voter SLV 14 September 1916 p.3
In August 1914, the managing directors of four Great Powers in Europe announced that a war had been arranged and that fighting would begin at once... (Our) Prime Minister at once sent a cable message to England that Australia was in the war to the last man and the last shilling.
Eleanor Moore The Quest for Peace As I Have Known It In Australia
The War - This must be the last war between civilised peoples. The woman movement, which is growing in every nation, will force upon Governments the necessity of finding other means of settling international disputes. It is awful enough that millions of men are standing face to face with violent death.
It is more awful that all the rest of the people of the world are in danger of starvation. The food supplies of the world must cease when the hands that reap and sow are occupied in the work of slaying men. Instead of the highways of the world bringing foodstuffs, they are given up to the carrying the means of bloodshed and death.
The millions that war costs must be paid ultimately, and by the weakest, and these are the women and children of the working classes, who will pay with hunger and cold and cruel privations.
There is no real cause for the war! Great Britain has no quarrel with Austria, France none with Germany or Russia. Do we not owe to every European Nation, and they to us, the advance in art and learning that should make for everyone more happy and complete?
It is because every nation has been armed to the teeth, and the idea of war has been before them for so long: because the value of life has been obscured, that this terrible disaster, when all the evil forces of hatred, greed and violence are to be let loose, has fallen upon us.
Women know the cost of life too well to risk it lightly. Olive Schreiner writes: "There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she has born children, or been merely potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a battlefield covered with the slain, but the thought would rise in her "So many mothers' sons!"
Woman Voter August 4, 1914 SLV
The headlines just make one feel sick and one shudders at the wicked waste of life - life that cost so much, that is so precious.
Doris Blackburn Double Time Women in Victoria - 150 years Marilyn Lake Farley Kelly Penguin 1985 p.355
Vida Goldstein: We do not say that this war was promoted with the deliberate object of crushing the workers but we do say that: belief in Might, the fear of enemies without and within national boundaries, the use of the press, of armament firms, of secret diplomacy, under which the great mass of the people live in avoidable anxiety, wretchedness and ugliness had made such a clash of interests that a clash of arms between nations prepared for war ... become inevitable when circumstances and opportunity sounded the tocsin of alarm.
The Women's Peace Army, Pat Gowland from Women, Class and History ed. Elizabeth Windschuttle, Fontana 1980 p.220
The war brought unemployment for many women and, for a few, jobs at men’s working conditions and rates of pay.
Geraldine Robertson
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