WOMAN'S RECORD FOR 1919

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3376, 2 March 1920, Page 7

WOMAN'S RECORD FOR 1919

(By Jessie Mackay, in the Lyttelton Times.) Great Changes in the international and general status* of women took place during 1917 and 1918, but the gains of 1919 have been even more striking and significant, though finality in several important issues cannot be proclaimed before the last day of December. Naturally one turns first with reverence to mark the loss of honoured pioneers and women of achievement since last the yearly roll of fame was called. The Great Reaper has left America mourning for one of the women of the century, Dr,. Anna Howard Shaw. Dr. Anna Shaw filled many roles since she graduated at Boston in 1878. For many years she was president of the National Union of Women's suffrage Societies in America. Long ago she was ordained a pastor in the Methodist Church, and in the pulpit as on the platform she was a speaker of rare power and eloquence, whose voice was familiar in Europe at great international gatherings. The influence of her radiant and magnetic personality may be gauged from the scheme to raise £20,000 for an Anna Howard Shaw Memorial Chair of Politics at Bryn Mawr College. America, too, has lost one of the most popular of women poets, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, a household name on both sides of the Atlantic, and indeed wherever our tongue is spone, Mrs Katherin Leute Stevenson, distinguished in the work of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, whose visit to New Zealand will be remembered, has also passed away. England lost her once idolised Queen of Song, Adelina Patti, whose still lovely voice, though she had passed the allotted span, was last heard at a patriotic entertainment during the war. Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, and a writer, also died. Two women ended in symbolic diversity on German soil lives of effort as diverse. Hedwig Dohnr, the oldest suffrage pioneer in Germany, passed peacefully away at eighty-six, comforted by the full triumph of her quiet propaganda. Rosa Luxemburg, the Russo-Jewish Socialist, was murdered in Berlin with Liebknecht, at the first crushing of the Spartacists. New Zealand has lost Mrs W. W. Morton, of Lyttelton, president of the Plunket Society, whose gentle and attractive personality, wide in all generous sympathies, has left its mark upon the noble work_wl.ich engrossed so much t>f her later years, over and above the home life which she adorned. Suffrage, as the most adequate test of woman's public status, must as usual take first place in the annual review of feministic progress, and the triumphal march continues. Sweden has this year joined the other northern nations of Europe, and granted full suffrage to her women. Holland, in doing the same, has ended the absurd situation to which the Dutch woman was at once voteless and eligible. Belgium has adopted rather a grudging compromise in conferring the vote on war widows, fallen soldiers' mothers and women who suffered imprisonment on patriotic grounds during the enemy occupation. The communal vote, however, is secured, the key of local government. This modified Belgian victory is important, nevertheless, as the first enfranchisement of women of the Latin race. Tiny Luxemburg was more openhanded, though. The sweeping suffrage grants in Germany, Austro-Hungary and Czechoslovakia, though extended in the last days of 1918, have been as generously proved in the subsequent elections. Germany's twenty-one millions of enfranchised women helped to return thirty-six women for the Federal Assembly, and, I think, about seventy women to the various State Parliaments. These judge, seeing that it is unequivocably stated that Germany has removed all disabilities from women, and domestic legislation is progressing with amazing speed. Austria, now in the nadir of her want and misery, did start fair with her women under Bela Kun, proof of which equality under Soviet Government is entirely wanting as regards the Bolshevist regime in Russia. Seeing the undoubted strength of women in the re-shaping cf the Teutonic order, one regrets the more that we are so much less in the way of keeping our powder dry east of the North Sea. In England a half-loaf measure, called the Sex Disqualification Removal Bill, evolved some humorous features in the course of its troubled passage. The House of Commons would not touch the suffrage disability of women under thirty, but insisted on the peeresses in their own right sitting in the House of Lords. The dukes and earls were vaguely understood to be not all disposed to some widening of the ordinary franchise, but positively shut the dcor on the peeresses. The Bill is cabled as passed: how the baronesses fared at last we know not; certainly the voting commonality got nothing. One woman now sits at Westminster, Lady Astor having won her husband's recently vacated seat at Plymouth. Canada's noble and practically universal suffrage victory during the war years is bearing fruit in many directions, and Vae tiny band of women in the State Parliaments is slowly increasing. British East Africa has gallantly won full suffrage and eligibility, and South Africa itself, the Ugly Duckling of Dominion Suffrage heretofore, sees hope in the near future, followng the fine appeal of the Premier, General Smuts, in the banquet speech at Johannesburg. Jamaica has given a good lead to the West Indies. Lastly, New Zealand this spring paid a debt of honour contracted twenty-six years ago. and opened to women the door of the Lower House. That our "lords" in a dying spasm gave one last antediluvian kick to hold their own door fast did not. under the circumstances, raise more than an ironic smile. It is regrettable that no woman candidate was returned, but considering the exceedingly short time possible for the women's campaign, and the confusion of issues, the h ; gh polling of Miss Melville in Grey Lynn is a matter for congratulation and hope. Returning to the Continent, France's high-sounding talk has ended miserably. Quite early in the year, indeed, the French Chamber of Deputies passed a Suffrage Bill enthusiastically by a sweeping majority. But the Senate, with unpatriotic selfishness, contrived to strangle it. We

understand that the Lower Chamber is willing- to force agreement if the reactionary veto is again risked by the Senate. Italy has had another such rebuff, if a less premeditated dashing of the sudden hope sprung to life in that backward country. The Italian Lowe;* House, also, had passed the Suffrage Bill handsomely, but an unexpected dissolution hindered the Bill going to the Upper House this year. For the first time suffrage plays a live role in the East. The Jewish State has begun its political record by a full enfranchisement of the women of' Palestine. The happy progress of women in the British dominions abruptly halts at the shore of India. A surprisingly strong and united demanl for some measure of Indian Home Rule includes the educated women of India —a negligible minority, alas! But,, strongly as the educated men of India now urge the inclusion of their women, the Commission to consider the scope of Indian eligibility reported against it on vague and untenable grounds. The scheme for Burma was still worse, as touching women, since the daughters of Burma under the old Buddrist regime were freer than their sisters in the West. Mrs F.esant was summoned to confer with the Commission in London; Indian women of high standing and attainment formed deputations with Indian men of like standing. Whether the adverse report was rejected before the Bill was put through this month the cable does not inform us. If not, a blunder of serious magnitude has compromised an already ominous situation. America stands by itself, in a curious constitutional tangle. Twice the Senate threw out the Federal amendment sent up by Congress to enfranchise all American women, subject to the accepted three-fourths ratification by the State legislatures. The anti-social forces are now abroad to prevent ratification. The question, like everything else, has been dragged down to the arena of party politics. Seventeen or eighteen States have now ratified; and it is likely that the influence of women in the present Suffrage States on the Presidential elections next year will grease the chariot wheels of Republican and Democrat alike and it is felt that comphta \»ctory is now only a matter of months.

Precedents of far-reaching importance to women have been laid down by the Peace Conference and League of NatVons, transcending even the suffrage question. Lord Robert Cecil, hailed now by many British reformers and most thinking British women as the coming statesman, has rendered yeoman service wherever the women's cause was in need, and never to greater purpose than when he carried his motion at the Pea; 3 Conference, giving women the right to any position in the League of Nations. They may be on the i.ecrotariat, on the main body of d*l3gates, or on the Executive Conn :il. I may add that gallant little Norway has again led Europe by appointing a woman delegate the other month.

The Peace Conference was a prime opportunity for putting the Humau-'-ties (simply another name for the true feminism) before the international leaders. Both to the and to the Commission of L\ err."»tional Labour women rep:esent.ui vs pleaded specifically for the restrict 3'J women of the East, for "the unfortunate women of the West, and for the protection of - children in in lustry. The noble though not yet official charter of International Labour goes far to meet the needs of woman and the world. Of the World Congress of Working Women planned to meet and influence the recent International Labour Congress at Was'iingtonu, I cannot speak in detail, but these great movements are plainly the beginning of a new era p= ».ap>. nearer tban we dared heps. Education can only be glanced at, but two features of good ome" -.re the Indian Womens University, which this year held its first convocation, and the projected Wtrfcmg' Women's University, which i> - J* n tped will he opened near London early in the New Year. It is, to some extent at least, under the auspices of the Y.W.C.A.;- it is to be residential and non-vocational, and it will link Britain with similar movements for the higher education of the workers in other countries. Nor must we forget that New Zealand hails this year her first woman Doctor of Science, Mrs Bella D. Jennings nee Cross. A year's record, truly, from which, much may be expected hereafter.