Women and technical classes.
Enquiries were addressed to the Secretaries of Technical Education Committees in every town in the kingdom where the printing and kindred trades are of any importance, asking—
"1. Whether, in connection with your technical and other schools, any provision is made for the training of women in the bookbinding or in any of the printing or stationery trades;
"2. Whether the classes have been attended by any numbers of women; and
"3. Whether you have received at any time from employers statements showing the effect of such classes upon these trades?"
Seventeen replied that no provisions were made, six that the matter was under consideration, but only in one case was it stated that classes had been opened, and then the women had not taken advantage of them. The London County Council Technical Education Board has had only one application (to which it could not accede [59]) from a woman who desired to attend bookbinding classes.
[59] The woman was an amateur who had no connection with the trade, and the Board refused admission on that ground. See this Board's Special Report on Technical Instruction of Women.
This shows that in these trades the school, so far as women are concerned, has not yet been brought into contact with the workshop. Nominally the classes are open to women actually engaged in the trade, but women do not attend. This seems to be partly owing to the attitude of the men, and partly owing to the lack of interest on the part of the woman worker in the few facilities afforded to her by Technical Education Committees.
The Home Arts and Crafts Association and kindred movements have taught women amateurs bookbinding and leather work in a good many centres, but this training has had no general industrial effect. The Association for the Employment of Women has offered facilities for the training of women in working the linotype, but it has met with but scanty response. "It is work which needed more skill," said one employer, "than women possessed."[60]