Example 2.—­A husband and wife, both medical, went to settle in a town in the north of England.  They both practised, the qualifications of both were excellent, but the woman was the more brilliant of the two, having better degrees and more distinctions.  Both applied to be admitted to the local medical society.  The man was, of course, accepted, the woman refused on the score of her sex, this meaning that she would be cut off from all opportunity of hearing medical papers and discussing medical subjects with her colleagues.  During the next few months a local friendly society was anxious to obtain a medical officer and was offering terms regarded as insufficient by the local doctors.  Among others approached by this society was the medical woman in question.  Directly the officials of the medical society, which had banned her when her own benefit was concerned, heard that she had been approached by the friendly society, they elected her without asking her consent to the very society from which they had previously excluded her, in order that she might be unable to take the post in question, whereby they might have financially suffered.

Example 3.—­The exclusion from medical societies referred to under Example 2, like many similar actions in life, tends to recoil on its instigators.  For instance, a medical woman in another northern town applied for and accepted a post which the local men had decided was unsatisfactory in some particulars, and for which therefore none of them had applied.  They were loud in their denunciations of the woman in question, but owing to the fact that her men colleagues had not recognised her professionally in other ways, she was quite unaware of her offence for several months after undertaking her new duties.

Example 4.—­Men and women are sometimes appointed on apparently equal terms and conditions to posts which are not, however, really equal, in that there is a chance of promotion for the men but none for the women.

Example 5.—­In another town in the north of England men and women appointed to do the work of school medical inspection on equal terms recently considered that they were not sufficiently remunerated.  They met and decided that they would together apply for better terms.  A rumour was then set abroad that the authority under whom they worked would certainly not consider such an increase in expenditure.  In this crisis the men on the staff, although they had so far joined with their women colleagues in sending up their petition, sent up another of their own, without informing or consulting the women at all, in which they said that they considered it was time that this equality of remuneration for both sexes should cease.  They begged the authority to neglect their public appeal, but to grant instead increased remuneration to the men, and the men only.  One of the reasons given for this suggestion on the part of the men was that their liabilities were greater.  The result of enquiry, however, proved that of the three men, one only was engaged to be married, the other two had no one dependent upon them; whereas of the three women, two were supporting other people—­one being a married woman separated from her husband and with two children to support and educate.