WOMEN'S FIGHT FOR EQUALITY

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3195, 25 June 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

WOMEN'S FIGHT FOR EQUALITY

INDIAN WOMEN AND THE FRANCHISE.

Mrs Pethick-Lawrence, president of the Women's Freedom League, in a speech at the annual conference of the League in England, traced the progress 'of the women's movement since the League was established 25 years ago.

To-rday, she said, women realised with amazement the immense change that had taken place in the entire position of women in the community. " Yet to-day it was becoming a practice on the part of the State, of municipal corporations, and private employers deliberately to dismiss a woman from her profession or employment on the day of her marriage. " This practice must be stopped," she said. " The arbitrary dismissal of women from employment affects the working woman quite as much as the professional woman, for if the right of the manried woman to earn wages is taken away by law or by custom, she is thrust back into the same position of compulsory economic dependence that she occupied in the days when any wages that she might earn belonged by law to her husband."

POSITION OF INDIAN WOMEN. ~ Mrs Pethick-Lawrence referred to the growth of the women's enfranchisement movement all over the world, and said that in India there was being seen an illustration of the truth that " the last shall be first." From- all important women's organisations in that country a manifesto had been sent out to the Governments of India and Britain declaring against any special provision being made in favour of women in

the proposed franchise laws of the new constitution, and against any reservation of seats or co-option in the Legislatures. The women were unanimous in declaring for adult franchise, and they stood upon the principle of complete equality without privilege, no matter what it might cost them.

Even if there were no women at all returned for the present Legislatures, they were prepared to accept the contingency.

"It is a magnificent challenge to women throughout the world, and we of the Women's Freedom League reecho it, calling upon the women of, our own country to follow the lead of our Indian sisters and to be ready to sacrifice to the uttermost for the principle of complete equality of women and men in all spheres of common life," she said.

SEX DIFFERENTIATION,

The conference unanimously passed a resolution protesting against "the continued sex differentiation" shown by the Bradford Stock Exchange in refusing to admit " a woman equally well qualified by position and experience with many of the sixteen men already admitted to membership," and urging the Exchange to bring in rules more in line with modern practice in other professions. The conference also condemned as unjust the refusal of ordinary covenanted benefit to thousands of married women under the Anomalies regulation, and demanded the cancellation of this regulation and the repeal of that section of the Act that delegated power to the Minister _of Labour to make orders discriminating against the married woman.