WOMEN IN POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 144, 21 June 1933, Page 11

WOMEN IN POLITICS

AIMS OF THE LEGION , MEETING AT KELBURN An address upon "The Influence of Women in National and Political Life" was delivered by Mr. W. E. Leicester at a New Zealand Legion meeting in Kelburn last night. The purpose of the meeting, which Avas held in St. Michael's Schoolroom, was to form a Kelburn centre of the Legion. Mr. C. W. Nielsen presided. , "I have been told on several occasions that a large degree of apathy in political matters on. the part of women in New Zealand is due to the fact that they obtained the vote too easily," said Mr. Leicester. "I do not agree with thi view, nor do I think that- tho facts support it. Women in this country have had the vote since 1893; and while it is true that, as yet, no woman has sat in our Parliament, the activity of. women in political affairs has been marked by very important consequences to us. In a very large measuro the | humanitarian trend of New Zealand thought and legislation is due to tho concentration of women on matters of immediate importance to home and family life. AVithin five years of their obtaining the vote social legislation in the form of the Divorce Act of 1898 afforded women an equality of divorce rights—a matter of, fundamental importance to our society—rights which in England they have not yet acquired, despite the added status in divorce matters granted in 1923. INFLUENCE ON LEGISLATION. "At the first Pan-Pacific Women's Conference in 1928, the president .of the New Zealand National Council of Women placed before that Conference a list of forty-four Acts in which the organised • effort of women voters had had an effective influence. It is uninoccssary to stress the part that they have played, and in increasing numbers continue to play, in the local administration of hospital and charitable aid boards. ■ Perhaps the most significant portion of their work . has been tho efforts of the Plunket Society, which has shown more than anything else their great ability to plan sustained and constructive co-operative organisation. This great work goes back to 1907, when Sir Truby King (then Dr. King) and his wife smarted their educative measures in infant welfare in a very small way in Dunedin. To the efforts of many, enthusiastic women since that time the credit for New Zealand's exceedingly loif rate of infantile mortality is due. Their work has been such that between 1908 and 1927 the infant mortality has fallen to nearly, one-half. "It is a significant fact as well as an economic fact, that a child born in New Zealand has greater chances of living than a baby born anywhere' else in the world, and it would be difficult to find any economic fact that is of greater ultimate importance to the Dominion. A special investigator of the United States Children's Bureau, after research and survey on the exhaustive scale that is characteristic of American effort in these fields, gave out as his considered opinion that the most important influence in the redue-1 tion/of infant mortality is undoubtedly the work of the Royal New Zealand. Society for the Health of Written and| Children. IDEALS OF THE LEGION. "The ideals for which tho Legion stands go to the root of the future life of tho youth.of this country, and by applying practical.effort to the operation of these ideals, the women in this country jiave in. .the. Legion .an organisation that* they can. make . as' potent and as successful as they have made the Plunket Society." Messrs. John ; Stewart and 11. "W. Free also spoke. '- The chairman, Mr. Nielsen, said the Legion movement had definitely appeared on the horizon some three months ago, and was now well established from the North Cape to the Bluff. It was composed of disinterested men and women, which considered that, an effort should be made to stem the present drift.' < ' j A number of new members were enrolled, and the following committee for the Kelburn Centre of the Legion was formed: —Messrs. H. Gibbins, G. G. Callender, R. H. Webb, J.H. Duncan, A. Lute, J. K. Matthewson, C. W. Nielsen, J.A. Dolierty, B. R. Bliss,. A. W. Clouston, M. Gandar, D. How, N. Phillips, A. D. Kerr, D. MaeFarlane, and G. M. I. Adams, Mesdames G. Duncan, A. M. Matier, A. Bateson, and Miss Flcrnming.