INTER-ALLIED WOMEN'S CONFERENCE.

Waipa Post, Volume XII, Issue 836, 28 August 1919, Page 7

INTER-ALLIED WOMEN'S CONFERENCE.

The Inter-Allied Women's Conference in Paris, called by the French Woman Suffrage Societies, was a marked success (states an English ■correspondent). A series of most interesting meetings, attended by delegates from Belgium, Italy, Britain, the British Dominions, • and United States of America, was interspersed by even more interesting interviews with all the chief representatives of the Powers assembled for the Peace Conference.. President Wilson, in particular, gave a warm welcome to the women, and strongly supported their claim that a committee of representative women, and strongly supported their claim that a committee of representative women should be appointed to sit in Paris during the Peace Conference, in order that their advice might be sought in matters specially related to women and children. Such a committee has now actually been chosen, and at the time of writing was sitting in Paris. Though it is merely an advisory body and its recommendations hav6 no force or claim to be heard beyond that of courtesy, yet it is a step in advance for women to have secured even so small a share in the momentous decisions on which the fate of the world depends. The following resolutions were carried unanimously at the Women’s Conference:—“That in every one of the Allied countries—(a) Women shall be ft granted the vote on the same terms as it is, or may be, granted to men. (b) Married women shall not be deprived of their nationality against their will, (c) All existing inequalities in the law as between men and women shall be removed, all offices and employments shall be open to men and women equally, and payment for work shall be independent of sex. (d) The moral standard shall be equal for both sexes.” These resolutions were sent by the British Dominions Women Citizens’ Union, and were moved by the delegate of that union, Miss Ruth Atkinson, of New Zealand, by the request of the French president, Madame Schlumberger. They form, as it were, a confession of faith, a programme upon which the leaders in the Allied countries are agreed without discussion.