The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. "Luceo Non Uro." SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1936. Votes for the Women of France

Southland Times, Issue 22915, 13 June 1936, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. "Luceo Non Uro." SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1936. Votes for the Women of France

It is a paradox that France should be so enlightened as to have three women in her new Cabinet and yet should lag behind the rest of the great nations in granting woman suffrage. Finland was the first European country to give women equal political rights with men. This was in 1907, and within a few years the other Scandinavian countries had followed suit. The beginning of the agitation for woman suffrage in England goes back to 1792 when Mary Wollstonecraft introduced the subject in her “Vindication of the Rights of Women.” In 1865 a Society for the Promotion of Woman Suffrage, was formed in Manchester, and there were high hopes that the third Reform Bill of 1884 would contain a provision giving women the vote. But the agitation by the Society made no impression “on the implacable hostility of Mr Gladstone”; the Bill ignored woman suffrage. The suffragettes of the twentieth century decided on more militant measures, and the early years of King George V.’s reign were marked with most unseemly demonstrations and violent agitation. The Act of 1917 gave a restricted suffrage to British women and all restrictions were removed by the Act of 1928. German women received a vote under the new constitution of 1919 which provided for a federal legislature consisting of a Reichstag representing the whole nation and elected by popular suffrage, male and female. In woman suffrage reform the British colonies were much ahead of Europe. In New Zealand, for instance, women have had the right to vote since 1893. While the emancipation of the women of other lands was proceeding the women of France were not idle. But a deadweight against their progress was the Napoleonic codification of the laws which gave to a Frenchman the role of the Roman paterfamilias with almost supreme authority over his dependents, including his wife. The agitation by French women for electoral reform was, much more subdued than that in England and did not have the same numerical force behind it, for a great many French women, used to being treated on a different plane from man, could see no need for emancipation. In March, 1932, M. Laval, who was then Premier, had the temerity to bring down a Bill containing electoral reforms which included woman suffrage. It was open to question whether there was any real hope that the Bill would become law, since the hostility of the Senate to woman suffrage was widely known. In a turbulent 22-hour sitting the Bill passed the Chamber of Deputies, but it was rejected with scorn by the Senate, and the Laval Government fell.

In the intervening years there has been a growing revolt among the younger women of France against the disabilities from which they suffer, including their disfranchisement. As a result of their efforts a Woman’s Suffrage Bill was recently drawn up and put through a first reading before being sent to committee, in which stage it will be studied at length by the deputies. It might have been thought that the swing to the Left at the last election in France would have helped the cause of woman’s suffrage; but here again is a paradox. The progressive parties of the Left are fearful that a great many women will in their voting reflect the reactionary influence exerted on them by the Catholic clergy. It is -the Right forces who, though believing that woman’s place is in the home, do not object so strongly to her having a vote. But even if the Chamber of Deputies did agree to this reform the Senate would remain as a serious obstacle. It was in an attempt to win support in the Senate that a week ago a band of young suffragettes dropped from the gallery stockings on which were messages stating that even when women received the vote they would continue to darn men’s socks. But it will take more than such blandishments to gain the Senate’s consent to the Bill. Fears that the granting of the suffrage to women would have harmful effects in the country adopting this reform should have long been dispelled, and so should the theory that women as a class are incompetent to judge political issues. But French women are opposed by something even more formidable than these groundless fears and fallacious beliefs. Frenchmen still hold the view that woman can, without sacrifice of dignity, willingly subordinate herself to the husband or father who keeps her, and theft for her to claim equal partnership with him is illogical and dangerous. Suffragettes in France will have an arduous task to alter this view, unreasonable though it may be.