Letter: Women's Lib.

Yesterday (1 March) I went to a Women's Lib meeting in the University Union Building. I was surprised to see that quite a few men had turned up. I was even more surprised when I noticed they were allowed to bog down the meeting with their loud voices and ignorant antagonism, blah-blahing about maternal instincts and the working-classes.

I felt very indignant to actually hear Neil Wright speak up and try to impose his views. In N.Z. there has been such a long history of trade-unions and other labour organisations discriminating against women that he had no right whatsoever to open his mouth. The only decent thing for him to do at that meeting would have been to stand in a corner and cry his poor wee soul out.

At this University anything done for or by women has been done in spite of the lack of co-operation either from the Left or from the Right. A concrete example the University Creche has been started by the most apolitical woman I have ever known. It is in its fourth year now without so far having had the faintest trace of help from the people who are now the big shots in the Students Association (or for that matter the Women's Lib.). The Women's Lib gets hopelessly side-tracked when they only talk about legalised abortion, abolishing marriage and 24 hour creches, ideals that will not be fulfilled within the coming decade in NZ. It is easy to build up theories without ever in fact starting practice with simple things like the Black Panthers' breakfast for children or Glennis Bush's University Creche. Getting back to this meeting; the men who are serious in advocating Women's Lib should get together and ally themselves with the Women's Lib, men who are serious in questioning it should be given a letter-page in Salient giving Women's Lib a chance of communicating in a more efficient way than at an untidy meeting.

And so Women's Lib if you yourself are ever going to be serious, chuck out the men.