STATUS OF WOMEN

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21180, 29 October 1938, Page 20

STATUS OF WOMEN

AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST’S VIEWS Passing through Auckland on her way to America is Mrs E. L. Littlejohn, president of the Equal Rights International, a body whose main object is as its name suggests—to see that women have equal rights, in practice as well as law—with men, states “The Star.” “There is one aspect I would emphasise,” Mrs Littlejohn said. “And that is that women take an active interest in the legislature of their countries. The government of the country affects women vitally. One cannot be born or cremated outside its jurisdiction. It is no use lying low now, and then complaining, when all power is lost, that women have no voice.”

Mrs Littlejohn sums up her many activities in one phrase—“equality of opportunity and status for women.” For many years she has attended the assembly of the League of Nations at Geneva, paying special attention to the traffic in women, nutrition and women's status. Studying the conditions under which the women of the world are living, she has visited Russia, Turkey, Palestine, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Italy and Great Britain. In 1935 she was awarded the King’s Jubilee Medal, and In 1937 the King’s Coronation Medal. She has broadcast from Copenhagen and Geneva. Mrs. Littlejohn will give a lecture tour in America, talking on “Democracy in the Pacific,” “The World’s Challenge to Women,” “Women in World Affairs," “Maternity in a Changing World,” as well as other subjects that concern women and their relation of the life of to-day. Mrs Littlejohn herself has just undergone a serious operation at th‘e hands of a woman surgeon Dame Constance D’Arcy. She is the mother of four children—two sons and two daughters. The youngest son has just returned from England with a degree in science and economics.