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A WOMAN'S CREED

(The following creed was written by Laura Drake Gill, for several years dean of Barnard College and now head of the college at Swansee, Tenn.)

I believe that every woman needs a skilled occupation developed to the degree of possible self-support.

She needs it commercially for an insurance against reverses.

She needs it socially for a comprehending sympathy with the world's workers.

She needs it intellectually for a constructive habit of mind which makes knowledge usable. She needs it ethically for a courageous willingness to do her share of the world's work.

She needs it aesthetically for an under. standing of harmony relationships as determining factors in conduct and work.

I believe that every young woman should practice this skilled occupation up to the time of her marriage, for gainful ends, with deliberate intent to acquire therefrom the widest possible professional and financial experience.

I believe that every woman should expect marriage to interrupt for some years the pursuit of any regular gainful occupation; that she should prearrange with her husband some equitable division of the family income such as will insure a genuine partnership rather than a position of dependence (on either side); and that she should focus her chief thought during the early youth of her children upon the science and art of wise family life.

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I believe that every woman should hope to return, in the second leisure of middle age, to some application of her early skilled occupa. tion either as an unsalaried worker in some one of its social phases, or, if income be an object, as a salaried worker in a phase of it requiring maturity and social experience.

I believe that this general policy of economic service for American women would yield generous by-products of intelligence, responsibility and contentment.

from the Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph, 1918

contributed by Paula A. Copestick

"Heavy Work" is Women's Work, Too

(Her Say)--Two Massachusetts researchers have dismissed the notion that women aren't strong enough to do what has been traditionally considered strenuous 'men's work".

Miriam Wardle of Boston College and David Gloss of Middlesex Community College in Bedford report they put eight healthy women with an average weight of 138 pounds to work on a treadmill for a full eight-hour day. The women received only two light meals and a 15-minute rest period at the end of each hour to break the routine.

The researchers say all eight women came

Women May Wait Tables at NY's Finest

(Her Say). Women may be serving haute cuisine. in some of New York's finest restaurants as 21 result of a temporary settlement in a class action suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against such star establishments as Lutece, La Cote Basque and the Four Seasons for refusing to hire women as waitresses, captains and bus

persons,

The restaurants have argued that they have a reputation for elegance that could only be upheld by formally attired, towel-properly-draped-over-thearm men--as it's always been.

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Under agreements signed by the restaurants, the ACLU and Local One of the Hotel Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Union, the "affirma. tive recruiting" of women for "table service employment" with training will be provided. The Union estimates that women make up 30 percent of its 8,000 members.

"Women Taking Charge": A Resource Manual

"Women Taking Charge" is a resource manual for women who want more control over their workplaces and are organizing to get it It includes articles on McCaysville Industries in rural Georgia, the only factory in the U.S. owned and operated from the beginning exclusively by women; credit unions in general and feminist credit unions in particular; Nine-to-Five, one of the oldest organizations of office workers; and the National Committee on Household Employment, which is working to organize domestic workers.

Women Taking Charge also provides information on resources involving women, employment, busi ness, and other economic institutions. An appendix on Small Business Administration programs is also included.

Women Taking Charge is available from Strong. force Publications, 2121 Decatur Place, N.W.. Washington, D.C. 20008. A single copy is $4.50; bulk orders are available at $3.60 per copy.

Women in Management Just as Steady

Debunking a myth, women managers don't leave jobs more often than men.

With a few exceptions, most companies report their experiences don't support the oft-expressed suspicion that turnover rates among women profes sionals are higher than those for men. Motorola Inc. says management turnover rates for its men and women managers are identical. At a Chicago bank -Continental Illinois -the rate is higher for men than for women.

Ryder System Inc., the truck-leasing operation, reports that, among all employees, women leave at a faster rate (28 percent) than men (23 percent), But

at the company's Miami headquarters, the rates are identical at 11 percent. General Electric, however, reports a differential .. 6 percent for men, 9 percent for women which the company says hampers efforts to increase the number of women in upperlevel jobs.

The GE differential is most pronounced among employees with high technical expertise. Some attribute this in part to the intense competition for such workers,

The Wall Street Journal November 14, 1978

through with flying colors, with 98 percent completing what was called "heavy work" and 92 percent finishing up what was described as "very heavy work".

Some of the heavy work consisted of the women carrying a 10-kilogram load up a 10 percent slope at six kilometers per hour for 45 minutes.

The researchers concluded that women "should not be compared with men in selection for positions requiring heavy work". They should, instead, the researchers said, be chosen if they are capable physically of doing the job.

Martha Tabor/LNS

Other Labor News

(Her Say). A study by the British Medical Journal has concluded that it is better both for a mother and her baby if the mother walks around during labor rather than remaining inactive.

Researchers at the Birmingham, England Maternity Hospital monitored uterine contractions and fetal heart rates while mothers walked around as much as 200 yards. The doctors found that labor was several hours shorter and that less pain-relieving medication was needed for mothers who walked during labor.

The study showed that 20 of the. 34 women who were monitored while they were walking around needed no pain-relieving drugs at all, while all of the 34 women who stayed in bed required some medication.

In addition, twice as many of those women who stayed in hed had to be given a drug to stimulate sluggish labors and those who remained lying down were also more likely to need more assistance in their deliveries.

The study showed that 31 of the women who walked around during labor had normal unassisted vaginal deliveries while only 22 of those who stayed in bed gave birth unassisted.

The doctors also report that the newborn babies whose mothers walked around during labor were much healthier and more active than those whose mothers were hed-ridden during labor.

December, 1978/What She Wants/Page 9