WOMEN IN BRITISH AND AMERICAN POLITICS

Evening Star, Issue 18254, 19 April 1923, Page 3

WOMEN IN BRITISH AND AMERICAN POLITICS

The recent elections held in flic United Stales ant! Great, Britain wove, sufficiently alike m choir object and were held closely enough together to afford Li, comparison of the part women candidates took in them and to permit a speculation ns to the possible reasons for the somewhat different results (says a woman writer in ‘Current History ’). In the United Slates twenty women were candidates for the House of Representatives. and all wore defeated, including the present member of the House. Three women were candidates for the Senate, and were also defeated. Ihe net result is the retirement of the present t ongresswornan and tiie return of no new members. The election of a woman from Illinois to fill, in the present. Congress, the vacancy caused by the death of her father in no way affects this result, as this was an honor conferred out of respect for him. In Great Britain thirty-three women were candidates for Parliament, and all were defeated except the two present members of the House. 'Two others came within a tew hundred votes of election. The net result is no gain in new members, but women have held their ground. Of these candidates it is interesting note that they represent all parties, thirteen being Independent Liberals, ten Labor, three National Liberals, three Unionists, and two Independents.

These differences, however, are more significant in connection with the tact tmit the American election was a progressive victory, in which women might have been expected to share ; while toe British election was a Conservative victory, in which women might have been expected to lose even what they had hitherto gained. Jn the United States, also, women have full suffrage to advance their candidates, while in Great Britain they have but partial suffrage, only women over thirty or householders being permitted to vote. Again, the American campaign extended over a period of over nine weeks, enabling women to select and urge acceptance of their candidates; whereas the British campaign covered less than three weeks, permitting of less time for selection and organisation. From the United States come complaints that the vote polled by women was not so heavy as had been expected ; in Great Britain'the women's vote teems to have been rather better than had been anticipated. Hero the differences apparently end and the likenesses begin. From the returns in both countries it is evident that women will not vote for women just because they arc women. The theory of sex solidarity in politics has been shattered, for women voted much after the fashion of men. It is also apparent that human affairs occupy women's attention in both countries, and that questions affecting women and children formed the main argument of their appeal for votes. It is equally clear that in both countries women are occupied with much tho same questions—extension of equal rights, divorce laws. Prohibition, protection of women and children in industry, unemployment, and housing to the exclusion of'a consideration of more abstract economic questions and foreign relations. . American women, however, will bo inarticulate in the House of Representatives, while English women will have leadership in the House of Commons. Ibe American woman’s movement, and her interest in great, social and moral questions, is splintered into a hundred fragments under as many warring leaders, while the British movement can be united behind leaders in Parliament, and thus be given of thought and expression as well as definiteness of purpose. Heroin lies the real significance of the two elections, leading ns to inquire what it is that British women have done, and what American women have, perhaps left undone, that gives to the former group a dignified, responsible leadership in the British Commons, and deprives the latter of that privilege in Congress.