NATIONALITY OF WOMEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 81, 5 April 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

NATIONALITY OF WOMEN

It has to he borne in mind that the great Republics of South America have always recognised the independent rights of a married woman to her own nationality, and that, during the past 12 years, a certain measure of progress towards this ideal has been made in other countries. Since 191 S, Russia, the United B*at**s of America and France have recognised the nationality rights of the married woman, and during the same period. Sweden. Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland. Belgium. Rumania. Yugoslavia, Turkey and Cuba have given important rights to the woman to retain her own nationality after marriage with a foreigner. The British and Australian Parliaments, and the German Reichstag have voted in favour of the principle of choice. These changes are the straws which tell the wind. Thought is tending in the direction of international adjustment and must inevitably fin I itself agreeing to the dropping of minor differences in order to grasp the benefits of work! settlement. The arguments which seek to block the adoption of an international rule of free choice for a woman as well as for a man, centre mainly round the fear of creating a condition of statelessness on the one ham! or of double nationality on the other. Doubts, too. are entertained about the wisdom of allowing the possibility of disunity of nationality in the family, which might lead to the increase of conflicts of law. Such arguments are based upon the assumption that it is better to bend the human being to the law. than the Jaw to the human being—expediency demanding defences against possible wrongs. Expediency, however, does not always run with justice, ami the advocates of human rights claim that the n'ost lasting good is gained in every instance by the fearless recognition of individuality and free will, and by the granting of that most fundamental of privileges, the privilege of independent citizenship. On the horns of a dilemma, the possessor of w hat is known as a lay mind may find help in arriving at a derision in the pronouncement of the members of the ton-most international jurists of the world who. at the 1929 meeting of the Tnstitut du Droit International, asserted. formally, their belief that human beings are entitled to equal rights under the law ami to equal protection of the law without distinction of race, religion, language, or sex. It is along these lines that a solution will be found; there seems no other way. The matter must be viewed without prejudice, and moulded into lines which will conform with the general trend of modern legislation and modern thinking, in which men and women are regarded in increasing measure as fellows of a common humanity, to w hom equality is a natural law.—Waikato Times.