A WOMEN’S PARLIAMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8613, 26 December 1913, Page 9

A WOMEN’S PARLIAMENT

ADVISORY LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY SUGGESTED.

Discussing " Women, Love, and the Vote ” at a conversazione of the Ethnological Society, London, Mr Bernard Hollander, the president of tho society, admitted that the .number of gifted women was steadily increasing, but declared that now that women had obtained tho privilege of writing letters after their name they found life no easier and certainly no. happier. The problem, “What shall we do with our girls?” was keener than ever. The suffrage movement was " peculiar,” and "dangerous to the stability of' the State,” because it was carried on chiefly by women, bachelors and a few disappointed married women, mostly childless, who had no interest in family life. If statistics were available of the number of children born to women members of suffragists’ societies and to women who took no interest in it the result would he amazing. As regards tho grievances of married women, which the vote was to remedy, he urged suffragists to remember that men wore already not too keen to marry, and that, since women’s charms were shortlived, any loosening of the bonds of matrimony could only be to the advantage of men. As to legislative influence, Mr Hollander said there was nothing to prevent women from forming an assembly of their own, framing bills for the welfare of their sex, and getting them taken up by Parliament. Such proposals by the representative women of Great Britain would be bound to receive earnest consideration.