AMONG OURSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 272, 16 November 1929, Page 15

AMONG OURSELVES.

A WEEKLY BUDGET.

(By CONSTANCE. CLYDE.)

THE CHINESE SUFFRAGISTS,

It has been said that while the nineteenth was the century of Western women, the twentieth will prove itself that of our sisters in the East. Miss Chave Collisson, remembered in connection with'the Royden mission, expressed this sentiment when addressing conferences in London. "The 'flapper vote' ]ias proved that conditions for women are now improving," she said. "We must now concentrate on the women of • the less forward races in the East." Perhapsin China, of all Eastern races, there is most hope in this respect. According to manv psychologists, the Chinese woman is politically minded. From time immemorial she'has had a flair for public affairs, but some centuries ago a stop was put to this by one mysoginist emperor, who forbade her to attend public meetings or to form meetings with other women." The conservatism of'the people and their respect for an Imperial decree thus kept half the race in subjection until our own days. Then, inspired perhaps by news from England, in 1911 a band of "suffragists stormed the Legislative Assembly,"to be ignominiously dismissed. But their demand for emancipation received some attention next year, and by 1D23 votes were granted in certain districts. Now there is a Women's Suffrage Association agitating for political rights throughout. China. THE JAPANESE GI?L. The modern Japanese girl is said to he a very different person from her mother in her youth. She disobeys her parents when she chooses, and has gained the right to both education and freedom. Her marriage rights, however, are still limited. 'She may not marry against her parents' .will until 25. As a married woman again, she has many disadvantages, and as consequence she is not anxious for this state. As a married woman she may not buy or sell landed property, or go into business with any real freedom. When her husband dies, the eldest son is made her guardian, an old custom, not yet abolished. ,As with the Chinese woman, there has been fear of her attendance at public meetings, which seems to have been regarded with unusual dread, a clause in the Act for Public Safety forbidding an audience to have any feminine representatives until 1924. Unlike the woman of China, however, the Japanese woman is said to have very little flair for politics. Her desire is to free herself from hard restrictions in married life, and to obtain still further opportunities for education jjmd culture. SEXUAL REFORM LEAGUE. One of the strangest' productions of jour time is the World League for Sexual Reform, which has just, held its third international congress in London. The subject dealt with includes family life, censorship, sex appeal, psycho-analysis, right to.- sex experience, spinsterhood problems, companionate .marriage, and so forth. The league claims'that by bringing such subjects into,: the open they free them from the irritating effects of ecclesiastical taboos and also of old conventional ideas. In referring to this somewhat amazing league, however, a writer in "The Women's Leader" considers that such taboos, either of churches or of'conventional opinions, are, perhaps, not so deleterious to humanity as is often declared. The influence of films on children is also one of the subjects for the members, and it is interesting to note that the reactions towards war films showed that quite 95 per cent of the young spectators were, or became, through the films, against the war ideal. SOME. EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN. The oblique aerial photography department of the rFairchild Aerial Survey Department of New York made a new departure when for the 'first time they put a woman on its staff, Miss Edith Keating, who proved very efficient in the business. The work is not at all easy, and probably she envies sometimes those now fairly numerous women who are merely aviators. "My camera, which weighs 601b, works on a pivot," Ishe says, "but a high wind creates difficulties, and sometimes I find myself black and blue through having to hold it eo close to me." In the world of poster designs women are taking a place. The British Empire Marketing Board have always considered their poster designs most important as propaganda work and this is the first time that they have issued one designed by a wpinan artist. Miss Claire Leighton is the artist in question, and the fact that she provided the illustrations for the memorial design of Hardy's "Return of the Native' proves her standing in the world,of art. Unusually honoured again is Miss Claire Sheridan, artist and writer, who has been commissioned to design for Harrow School, a purely masculine establishment, a memorial in hontfur of her famous dramatist ancestor of the same name.