WOMEN'S INSTITUTES AND POLITICS.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20919, 28 July 1933, Page 3

WOMEN'S INSTITUTES AND POLITICS.

EDUCATIONAL WORK TO BB INCLUDED. A greater interest in politics will be taken by women's institutes as a result of a resolution carried at the conference of the Dominion federation yesterday. In future the institutes will endeavour- to fit their members lor public life by listening to lectures on political and local government problems. . ••We are distinctly a non-poliUcal organisation from a party point of view, said the organising secretary tMrs** Kelso) when a remit from the Southern Wellington Federation, "That aU women's institutes should make an effort to have lectures on local government" was being discussed- "owever I think we should be congenital idiots if we did not try to take some interest in the government of our Mrs Kelso considered that lecturers should only be invited at the will of the majoritv of the members of any institute. "It is a bad thing to have no vote, but it is a worse thing to nave a vote and not to use it," she said. "and many of us do not use our votes simply because we do not know now Mrs W. Deans, president of the North Canterbury and West Coast Federation, moved as an amendment to the original remit the following: "I™* this meeting give a ruling on whether the women's institutes are open to receive lectures on subjects bearing oa the government of the country, and, if so, to inform institutes that they may invite lecturers on such subjects from the federation panel." Mrs Deans agreed with the speakers that women could not claim a place in local or national government unless they fitted themselves by education for the work. The amendment was then cameo. The chairwoman (Miss Amy Kane) expressed pleasure that it had been carried. "I have stood for two local bodies in Wellington," she the ignorance of both men and women 'as to who can vote and who caniw* is simply colossal— especially that « women."