WOMEN AND THE VOTE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 14 April 1928, Page 11

WOMEN AND THE VOTE

rj)HE women of Canada have discovered that ten yeans of the vote leaves them very little to show as a result of equal suffrage. Compared with the decade preceding, they find the practical results considerably less. A recent illustration shows just how effective a force women have been in the affairs of the Dominion since they were granted the franchise. The convention of the Conservative Tarty of Canada was attended by 1500 men delegates and 360 women. Of the women, many were wives and relatives of delegates, and not accredited to the convention. Deducting these, it is found that the proportion of representation, as between the seXes, was five to one.

Of the personnel of the convention committee 105 were men and 17 women. No resolutions introduced by women delegates reached the floor ot the convention; they were “put to sleep,” as one delegate expressed it, in the committees. Women’s doings were not “news” to the hundred and more newspaper reporters at the convention. A proposal to form a W’lomen’s Conservative Farty of Canada was deleated, with the aid of male opposition, in one of the committees.

Mivs. John Scott, of Montreal, one ol the leaders of the women’s movement in Eastern Canada, sums up the position thus: “Women arc tired of being exploited. When an election is on, it is a cry of ‘all hand's on deck,’ but, when plans are made, women are left out in the cold.” Another quotes the male view of their status: —“It was a dangerous experiment to give them a vote, but fortunately no harm has come from it. We have got the women safelv divided between the parties.” This woman finds the same tendency—to keep women outside the actual machinery- of public affairs —among Liberals and Labourites, as well as in the Conservative ranks. Women went to the Conservative Convention, who had behind them a record of useiul public works; these were women of high intelligence and

EXPERIENCE IN CANADA

constructive activity; women who, as leaders of society, would have been listened to in other days. As they expressed themselves subsequently'‘'There was no outstanding utterance from a woman at the whole convention —not even irom the women of the West, who are much freer in expressing themselves than in the East, and less awed by their own timidity and the prejudice of. men. Ten years after we got' the yotfi—which many of us did not want —we are admitted to the convention on suffrage.” An earnest examination is being made by women writers for causes ot the failure of the franchise. A crosssejfcion of the arguments they put forward is:—Canadian women have not , the adequate knowledge of public affairs possessed by Englishwomen, nor the sell-conscious ness and sense of direction of American women. They lack leadership by women. They have tailed altogether to represent the point of \ iew ol Canadaian women, either in the municipal provincial or federal sphere. The modern idea of the woman as an independent entity, with a destiny of her own, politically and economically is gradually giving way to the old idea, or ideal, oi “shrinking, dependent femininity,” to quote the words of a. well-known woman writer. Clubs and societies continue to pass the same hardy perennial crop of resolutions as in pre-sullrage days.

In the West, tilings are said to be better. There is less talk of the. vested rights of the masterful -‘governing ft ex.” One woman, Miss Nellie McLlung, has sat for several terms in the Alberta Legislature. Another, Mrs. Mary Ellen Smith, widow of a Cabinet Minister, sits in the British Columbia House, and is the president of the Provincial Liberal Association. A third is Judge Emily Murphy, or the Alberta Juvenile Court, better known for her writings under the name of “Jaiiey Canuck,” whose name has often been mentioned in connection with the agitation for women in the Senate of Canada.