6 APRIL 1934, Page 3

Men versus Women Teachers The National Association of Schoolmasters makes

a reasonable demand (which has been supported in these columns) when it asks for the restoration of the 10 per cent. cut in their members' salaries. But after the passing of a resolution to this effect, it was disturbing, to say the least of it, to find one of the delegates to the conference asserting, amid applause, that the salaries of men and women teachers should be treated as separate and distinct problems, and denouncing equal pay " or any approximation to it " in the teaching profession. Now the claims of women for equal pay can only be justly denied when their work is not equal ; and in many occupations it may reasonably be claimed that it is not. But if there is any profession in which conditions of work are nearly identical for the two sexes, it is the teaching prbfession, which demands the same qualifica- tions and powers of endurance from men and women alike. It is strange that schoolmasters should choose the moment when they are stating their claim on the good- will of the nation to display so ungenerous and graceless an attitude to their women colleagues.