Australian Women's Decision

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 218, 18 September 1934, Page 2

Australian Women's Decision

SYDNEY, Sept. 8. The Women’s Union of Service which functions hero under the leadership of Dr. Lucy Gullett, has reached a momentous decision, states a correspondent of the Auckland Star. It has decided that, “irrespective of the parties to which they belong, women candidates in the Federal elections should be given financial and platform aid,” and a special committee has been set up to carry this resolution into effect. The union is nonpolitical, but its members a,ro convinced that they can get reforms to their taste “only by fighting for them in Parliament,” and they consider it a reproach to Australia that its National Assembly does not include women. As a matter of fact, there aro no U.A.P. or U.G.P. women candidates in this State and, in terms of their resolution, the members of this union must support an A.L.P. candidate and three Douglas Credit candidates. Of course they mean to do their duty by the men as well, and they have prepared a Schedule of (test points for male candidates. These include tho economic independence of women legislation and’ equality of tho sexes; establishment of an international council for peace; proportional representation for Senate elections; Government control of munition manufactures; training for unemployed girls and boys; restoration of “cuts” in old-age and invalid pensions, and Federal control of aborigines. I presume that this touchstone is to be applied to the women as well as the men; but in any case the members of this union will reserve there votes, where they can, for women only. Throughout the rest of Australia, I may mention, there are only two other women canditates standing at the Federal polls; so that New South Wales is not exceptional in this respect. But this paucity of feminine claimants for political honours certainly does suggest that tho women of Australia collectively are quite satisfied with tho indirect representation that they and their interests have always enjoyed through the “mere men” for whom their votes are usually cast. Certainly Australian wo'ruen are not lacking in enterprise, in courage, in intelligence, and in a sense of personal and public responsibility, and I fancy that Dr. Lucy Gullett and her friends have rather misinterpret ed tho reluctance to plunge into the maelstrom of political life that the great majority of Australian women have hitherto displayed.