WOMEN AND POLITICS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 131, 30 November 1911, Page 2

WOMEN AND POLITICS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — I sen that the Women's Social and Political League of this country are holding a mass meeting on Monday next in connection with the coming election, and it is pleasing to see that this body of women are taking an intelligent interest in politics. It cannot bo denied that it is a slur upon the women of New Zealand that although they have had the franchise for nearly a generation, the shameful and .Unjust men-made laws with regard to th&ir sex are stall in 'force ; and it is time they took decisive action as to tho many social questions in which they are vitally interested. A prominent judge in England- -said lately that he hoped tho women there vxmld get the franchise, and thai they would, when i-hey got tho power, impose flogging with the cat upon male bigamists and other vicious criminals. Women hayo now great power in this country, and it- is their duty toturn their attention to such vermin as bigamists, wife deserters, girl seducers, and others. Why is a girl only protected until she is sixteen years of age? Why should she not . be protected during the most^ critical years of her life, and until she is' at least twenty one? It would be interesting to know what members of Parliament have tb say upon this, and why_ they have allowed such a state •of affairs to exist for so long. The reason ib chiefly because women have allowed themselves to be represented in the past by men who have not recognised their duty in this respect, and have treated * . c . ri ?hts of women in this country with ridicule and contempt. I have known many instances in which the question of the better protection of women has been made a "night out" in Parliament. 'A notable man in England had to suffer imprisonment and obloquy for the sake of getting young women protected from tho inhuman sharks which abound in all grades of society, and an imitation of the English law is now on the Statute Book of thia country, but it constantly set at naught because of tho out-of-date working of our judicial system, which requires to bo reformed in the direction of permitting women to serve on juries in cases where a member of their sex is a victim of crime. What with unacrupu--lou9 lawyers, grinning court loafers, redtape judges, who cannot sob beyond "corfoboration," abd 'depraved juries, justice to women in this , country is nothing more or less than v mockery and a farce. — I am, etc. ELECTOR. iYcllinsteii, 29jjh November. J8U t