MARRIED WOMEN’S NATIONALITY

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12538, 30 August 1926, Page 5

MARRIED WOMEN’S NATIONALITY

“The wife of a British subject shall be deemed to be a British subject, and the wife of an alien shall be deemed to be an alien.” So stands the Nationality Act of England at present. Some of us may remember how in war* time satuists drew cartoons of the obviously German wife who was Mrs Harris receiving aid while Mrs Schmidt, plainly an Englishwoman, was permitted to starve (says Consauce Clyde). In old times there was a rough and ready rule about nationality—tho married couple took that of the country in which they were domiciled, supposing that country were the native land ot one or the other. A woman, therefore, might become a foreigner, but she would not become a foreigner in her own native land, where after all it chiefly mattered. To-day women have special business and professional reasons for having their nationality respected, and yet there are persons who maintain that their nationality should automatically cease oil marriage with an alien, even though, as in the case of America, she does not immediately gain a new nationality, and is therefore in a sense non-existent for a time. The ruling in this matter in the Argentine is the worst of any. The woman marrying an Argentine man loses her British nationality, and never acquires that of her husband s country Under the proposed new legislation in Britain she would all the more remain a British citizen, for this Act ensures that she does not lose her British nationality “until sne has acquired that of the country into which she has married.”