TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 541 



businesses their employment is limited to shorthand and typewriting. For 

 various reasons, and largely because of the inferior status of women as workers, 

 they are paid less wages than the men. The Clerks' Union demands the same 

 wages (35s.) for men and women, though it is found in practice impossible 

 to enforce it. Many employers state that women are often paid less wages 

 than the men because they ask for less. A woman who asks for 25s. weekly 

 may be very good or very inefficient. Those, however, who ask for 35s. are in 

 almost every case extremely good workers and well trained, whereas men who 

 ask for 35s. are often indiiferent workers. 



Evidence with regard to displacement (which is taking place to a consider- 

 able extent) is very difficult to collect, save in a very general way, and no 

 attempt can yet be made to systematise it. 



Banking. 



Women were employed in banks only in exceedingly small numbers before 

 the War. As 20 per cent, of the men in the London banks enlisted during the 

 first three months of the War, it is to be expected that by now large numbers 

 of women will have invaded this hitherto almost preserved field of employment. 



In one bank the proportion of women has advanced from 4 per cent, to 

 20 per cent, of the whole staff, and taking thirteen representative banks it was 

 found that 336 women had been supplied to them by one agency alone by the 

 beginning of May, and that number has since been greatly increased. 



But the vacancies caused by enlistment have not been by any means entirely 

 filled by women ; in the case quoted above from 5 per cent, to 10 per cent, of 

 such vacancies were filled by men. In another, where 600 men enlisted, only 

 100 women have been substituted. 



The women drawn into the banks have been mainly young (from 18 to 25) 

 and of the secondary-school standard of education. At first only the quite 

 young were accepted, but so great was the unemployment among middle-aged 

 (thirty-five years) professional women that an attempt was made to persuade 

 those responsible for the choice of women employees to try them. Wliere this 

 counsel prevailed better results on the whole were obtained than in the case of 

 the young girls, who frequently failed, perhaps through lack of confidence, in 

 the test set, viz., the balancing of a page of a pass-book. The personnel 

 therefore of this new army of bank clerks is very varied — from the girl fresh 

 from home or school, through numbers with differing degrees of office experi- 

 ence, to women of training and experience, but in some totally different sphere 

 of work such as private teaching. 



Opinions differ somewhat widely as to the value and efficiency of the work 

 done by women. By one manager the statement was made that as a whole 

 women are more satisfactory than the men they have replaced, it being under- 

 stood that they only replace men in the more mechanical and routine classes of 

 work ; another held them to be always inferior to men even after considerable 

 training. It would seem to be agreed that generally women are most satis- 

 factory in the simpler branches, doing such things as pass-book calculations, 

 abstracting, and, of course, typing. Here they appear to compare favourably 

 with men, and are often superior to youths. In a few instances more respon- 

 sible positions have been given them, and with success, but this is not at all 

 general. 



Difficulties in employing women in banks have arisen mainly on account of 

 accommodation, but a little arrangement has generally overcome these. Other 

 objections have been put forward with more or less reason, as that womon are 

 less reliable owing to more frequent absences on account of illness. There would 

 seem to be some justification for this. Insurance company figures show that 

 between, the ages of 21 and 40 women's absences are 15 per cent, as against 

 men's 5f per cent., though below twenty-one years there is hardly any difference. 

 Less credible would seem to be the theory that women may not be trusted with 

 confidential matters. 



The remuneration for women in. banks is generally lower than for men. 

 This seems to be chiefly a matter of custom, but it is also advanced that 



