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Taranaki Daily News, 17 July 1929, Page 14

“I was a guest at a cocktail party the other night,” says the London correspondent of an exchange. “There were only four men present —the remaining thirty people in the room were women. Six or eight pretty young girls drank dry Martinis, and two middle-aged women asked for sherry. Everybody also, drank tea, and nibbled cucumber or egg sandwiches. I was very interested in this change in front. A year ago tea would have been sniffed at, and certainly there would have been no demand for anything to eat. Only the men smoked, by the way. The party was given by a famous French dressmaker, who tried to persuade her guests that Englishwomen were gradually being won over to longer skirts and French models. They vowed, he said, that they would keep their short frocks, but Paris was converting them —by fractions of an inch at a time. The French influence in women’s clothes was creeping in just as insidiously as ever through the English wholesale houses.” -

French women are still working to obtain the vote. Some years ago a Bill to give women full Parliamentary voting powers was passed by the Chamber of Deputies, but the Senate, following what is described as its usual procedure, shelved the Bill, states a London correspondent. News has just come from France of another definite move made by what is called the States General of Feminism. At the conclusion of a women’s congress a deputation waited on the Prime Minister, M. Poincare, and left with him a formal resolution demanding votes for women. The secretary of the States General of Feminism received a letter from M. Poincare promising that the Government would support a Bill then before Parliament to grant suffrage to women for municipal elections only. Municipal politics are not as important in France as they are in England or New-Zealand, and evidently M. Poincare feels that even if the results of woman suffrage in the municipalities did not succeed in breaking down the very deep prejudice against women in politics in France no •arm would be done.