WORLD PEACE

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 78, 29 September 1934, Page 18

WORLD PEACE

DEMANDS BY WOMEN

SEX BARRIERS MUST GO

World peace is the first demand of the 40,000,000 women in the 42 countries represented at the International Council of Women, which was held in Paris last month, states the "Sydney Morning Herald." No social, economic, or educational building of a new world can go on without a guarnnteo of security for growth and expansion.

The council contends that sex barriers must go, not only bocauso they tend to exclude women from certain fundamental rights enjoyed by men, but because they tend to suggest those dii> fcrencos and divisions between men and women which ultimately undorlio juid support differences and divisions between classes and nations. The council seeks equality of the sexes in education, in moral standards, in the right to earn, in the right of free collaboration of men and wome^in. legislative and administrative bodies. It was decided that women should dedicate themselves to the supreme task of surmounting barriers of race, creed, caste, and nationality and of promoting international reconciliation and goodwill. Such, a comprehensive programme leaves little room for comment, but, ambitious as it sounds, a council of women which has succeeded in establishing links of mutual good will between 42 countries has already taken a long step towards the attainment of its ideals of welding the nations of tho world into a sensible federation in which war will bo regarded as a relic of barbarism. "BUT AFTER AU " The majority of men, of course, regard such a magnificent ideal as utterly impossible of , attainment. They are openly derisive, bitter, • cynical, toler? antly amused, or merely sad at the in' evitable disillusionment which they believe to be in store for the -whole misguided feminine sex, with its ludicrous hopes. But, after .all,, in the past men have been equally cynical,, contemptuous, pessimistic .about' the possibility of women's ever accomplishing many feats which, tiday. are commonplace. And in the second place, the Pan-Pacific conference likewise bore eloquent testimony to the. fact that women everywhere, all over tho world, are absolutely united in theii determination to do all they can to prevent war and the making of armaments for private profit.] And there is really quite a large proportion «f women in tho world—evon forty million ought surely to make themselves felt sufficiently to bo taken seriously at least 1 ~,.'" Finally, isn't there at least something finer and more courageous about an honest attempt to do something to destroy the monster of War than there is about a mere passive of that which man is pleased to call Fate?