Are women fools?
THE WORDS are not meant to be insulting, but simply to put in the shortest possible form a question that might occur to a visitor from another planet where things were done differently—some world with six sexes perhaps or with none.
Women, such a visitor would observe, let their world be run by men. And he might very well conclude that. this is be- cause they are incompetent to run it themselves.
For us it is difficult to look at this arrangement dispassionately. It is a very ancient one; and freedom and education for women do not seem to have disturbed it much.
Are women really "inferior"? Are educated women less effective, as M.P.'s for instance, than their simpler, more intuitive sisters? And the trash girls read—why do most women choose such an insipid mental diet?
Low though male standards can go, generally speaking, the most trivial of all books, magazines, advertisements, T.V. programmes and other entertainments seem to -be those produced specifically for females. Women (and children) have special pages in newspapers. Men, by common consent, have the rest.
Yet they read The Observer' Presumably this is what women like. But the readership of The ObserVer has actually rather more women readers than men— and young women, too—in this being exceptional among serious newspapers. True, The Observer Inks its Women's pages ... but these are unusual also in that they deal with fashion and home affairs in a highly critical way. Moreover, famous as Alison Settle and Patience Gray may be, and valuable (e.g.) the consumer-goods research of Elizabeth Gundry and Eirlys Roberts, they cannot be the only attractions.
Is there then, in The Observer's pages, more common ground for intelligent, res- ponsible, unprejudiced people, more truly human interest, than in other papers? Well, that might be. Women who don't accept a state of permanent male patronage could investigate this next Sunday. J.B.
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