Woman's Suffrage in N. S. Wales.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 38, 18 September 1902, Page 2

Woman's Suffrage in N. S. Wales.

At la^t, after something of a struggle, the women of New South Wales hive received the franchise, and the papers anu politicians on the other side are busy speculating as to what will be the effect of the change. Curiously enough the representatives of the different parlies all seem to be afraid that the new vote will tell against them — the Liberals are afraid the vote will be Conservative, the Conservatives are afraid the women will vote Radical, and so on. If our experience in New Zealand may be taken as a criterion, we should say that there is little occasion for worry on the part of any party. We have had some years of female franchise in New Zealand now, and perhaps the most striking result of the experience has been the way in which all the mo^t confident anticipations and predictions which had been made regarding the vote have been falsified. We have found, for example, that it was a mistake to suppose that the women would not use the vote when they got it. The candidates and canvassers on either side have taken very good care of that. We have found that the notion that there would be disordeiliness at the polling-booths, and that our women would become less modest and womanly through mixing m the turmoil of politics was altogether fallacious, the effect o! women's presence, so far as elections are concerned, having been rather to improve the men than to demoralise the women. Most people thought they were on sure in predicting that the result ->t woman's vote would be that a better and higher type of representative would be returned, jtt we are well within the truth when we say that that ha-, lei tamly not been the case as yet in New Zealand. We have not found th it the new vote liar, made my appreciable difh rence in the position of p irties, or ha-» produced any very <-ptcial or marktd clttct of any kind, the only noticeable result being that on th." whole the women h ive t ikon a keener and ni'irc general inteiest in p >laics thin heretofore. fnat is of lUell, of course, no 111 1 tile g un, and it is in tins in re-isin^ly educative « tiect of the fr-v chi^c that the real beaefii ot the extension will Le mainly found.