WOMEN JUSTICES.

Evening Star, Issue 18729, 3 September 1924, Page 6

WOMEN JUSTICES.

It' was natural that strong indignation should ho expressed yesterday by the National Council of Women, of New Zealand, now assembled in annual conference in Dunedin, at the cavalier treatment given by the Upper House to the Bill which the National Council has long supported .for extending to women the right to serve ns justices of the peace. This was a, simpler question than the other one, involving rights of women who may marry aliens, which was discussed at the same sitting. Alike in Britain and in New Zealand the law makes not ungenerous provision now by which the woman who changes her nationality by marriage-with a foreigner may resume it, subject to approval of the Government of her original country, in time of war. The National Council desires to see it law that the nationality of no British woman should bo changed by marriage, save upon her special application. Nationality should be considered as a birthright, not something that should be subordinate to marriage. The complications that might follow from the granting of this request make a. large subject for consideration. /

<*\Vhon the issue is raised whether women should be eligible to act as justices of the peace, the natural question to ask is why they should not be so. Most other positions are open to them on the same terms as men, and this is comparatively a humble one. Women justices have their established place in America; Great Britain has women jurors. Service in either role must inevitably involve some highly disagreeable tasks for women; but, if they covet the duty, there is no reason why men should refuse it on that account. No woman would be compelled to bo a justice of the peace against her will. The best women in those positions would have undoubted valno for our system, more especially in those oases in wliich women’s and children’s interests were concerned. But tho Upper House has for the third time thrown out a Bill designed to give this right to the disqualified sex after it had been thrice passed, without Government .assistance, in the Lower Chamber. In Britain a Bill so treated would now bo law.

The resentment of the Women’s Council is understandable. Mrs Downing did not like to call the members of the nominated House who threw out the Bill “relics of a bygone age,” so “she thought they should be described as early Victorian.” We can leave the offending Councillors to answer that reflection. Tho number of men who do not see the need for either women justices or women jurors is large enough to suggest that there might have been more opposition to the Bill among elected representatives if they had not had to consider the women’s vote. Mr TVilford, who was the sponsor of the measure, was himself no more than a convert to its idea, having opposed it when he was Minister of Justice. But the National Council has the remedy in its own hands. The chief argument used against the Bill in the Upper House was that no widespread desire had been evinced by women to seo it passed. If the desire is general, and sufficiently so, tho National Council has only to show its extent, and the barriers of even the Legislative Council will go down before the women’s will. W© shall have women justices, for better or worse. The decision of yesterday’s meeting to procure all the signatures possible for a dominion-wide petition in favor of such an extension of rights before next session of Parliament shows a sound sense, on tho feminist leaders’ part, of how to obtain it.