Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1896 — WOMEN IN THE PROFESSIONS. [ARTICLE]

WOMEN IN THE PROFESSIONS.

The Great Increase in the United Kingdom—Seme Statistics. The advance made by women in the professions is strikingly brought out by this new census paper. In the civil service the number of women officers and'clerks had risen from less than 3,000 in 1871 to 8,546 in the last census year. In the local government of the country, too, women are much more freely employed. There was evidently a return of women doctors in 1871; they were awaiting their degrees, or had degrees which the census did not recognize; in 1881 they were returned as 25 in number, but ill 1891 they were 101 in England and Wales. Women veterinary surgeons appeared for the first time in the census of 1891. There were then two of them. Besides over 53,000 sicknurses, there are 887 women engaged in “subordinate medical service.” Under the somewhat comprehensive heading of “author, editor, journalist,” we find 660 women in 1891, as compared with 452 ten years before and 255 in 1871. Women reporters were rare in 1 RSI. Fifteen was the total number for England and Wales, but in 1891 there were 127. In the arts the invasion of the ladies is most conspicuous. In 1881 there were 1,960 of their sex who returned themselves as painters, engravers or sculptors; in 1891 the number had risen to 3,032. For the first time in 1891 there were lady architects on the census. They numbered 19. Lady musicians and music mistresses numbered over 19,000 in 1891. They were 11,000 ten years before. Instead of 2,363 actresses, as in 1881, there were in 1891 3,696. In the commercial class the increase of women workers is not so Btiiking, the apparently great augmentation of commercial clerks being explained by the transfer to this class of hundreds previously described as accountants. —London News.