WOMEN’S PART IN POLITICS

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25548, 16 July 1948, Page 2

WOMEN’S PART IN POLITICS

LADY VIOLET BONHAM CARTER’S VIEWS “Why have women not produced bigger and better fruits from the tree of their emancipation?” This was the question Lady Violet Bonham Carter was asked by the “Sunday Times,” London, some weeks ago to answer. Her answer brought her many interesting letters, which she commented upon in an article, “Women in Public Life.” One correspondent said that in the last Parliament in England there were 600 male and only 23 female members, and that she (Lady Violet Bonham Carter) had described one woman M.P., Ellen Wilkinson, as “a most accomplished and effective Parliamentarian,” and another, Eleanor Rathbone, as “bearing the stamp of greatness.” Would it be easy to find as many as 60 male M.P.’s who deserved such high praise as this? the correspondent asked. Lady Violet Bonham Carter said the question she was asked to answer referred not to the last Parliament, but to the whole period of women’s emancipation. If during those 30 years there had existed many Ellen Wilkinsons and Eleanor Rathbones who were also willing and able to enter the Parliamentary lists, it was reasonable to suppose that there would have been a larger and more distinguished body of women in Parliament. She had no doubt that many such women existed to-day. but many of the most gifted were debarred from a political career by the difficulty of reconciling their family claims with those of public life.

Prejudice Against Women Another correspondent said that because of the prejudice against a woman takink part in public life she always had to be three times as good as a man at any work in which she competed with him. There were dozens of women as good as Mr Attlee, Mr Strachey, or Mr Bevin. but only a very few who were three times as good. This might be true of the professions, said Lady Violet Bonham Carter. In the average constituency it was certainly true that there was still an archaic prejudice against adopting a woman candidate, unless she hapepned to have strong local roots or to be the wife or widow of the late member. But once in Parliament, she thought that politics offered to-day to any woman who had the time and energy to give to them, not only an equal chance, but a far greater opportunity to influence events than to a man with the same mental equipment.* “The novelty -of the role, the nakedness of the land, the new angle at which she will approach old problems, the glare of publicity which is focused upon her—all these will combine to throw her activities into vivid relief and to lend weight to her arm. I remember reading somewhere that ‘women and clergymen are news? . That is still true, I fear, and. though the suggestion of freak value may justly offend our armour proper, yet to be politically effective it is undeniably all-important to be ‘news,’ ” wrote Lady Violet Bonham Carter.

She thought it was not generally recognised that the social revolution of the last few years, while it left the wives of men very much as they used to be, had reduced most married women to the status of resident charwomen It was perhaps just and right that all women should now realise and share the burden; wt)ich most women had always had to bear. But it was a wanton waste of human resources and an impoverishment of netional life that so few young married women, however brilliantly endowed, should not have time to think.