The Girl's Responsibility in Her New World

What pleases me most in the lectures of the Cooperation Club is that the Club imposes the subject upon the lecturers; for the Club is better versed than any other in what concerns its members — or rather its lady members — in the talks they find agreeable and in the subjects that suit their thinking. And no wonder that they have chosen from among the subjects the most useful and those that reach deepest into social life. The Club is nothing less than a true picture of serious women's work, and of the intellectual and productive capacity of woman — in whom man wrongly supposed there to be weakness, dependence, and submission.

And I shall not conceal from you, ladies, that the subject I chose for myself captivated me; for to speak of responsibility in a country where no one feels any responsibility is sweet and delicious. This social quality, without which human society cannot stand upright, is the cornerstone in the setting right of society. It is not laws or codes, religious or civil, that guarantee peoples their progress and flourishing. If a man does not feel an equal feeling for his rights and his responsibilities, the order of life is upset and chaos reigns; for order is the child of responsibility, not the child of codes.

The individual is the nucleus of the group. If the part is corrupted, the whole is corrupted; and if it is upright, the whole is upright. It thus becomes incumbent upon a nation that desires life, and aims at success and prosperity, to attend to its individuals, so as to make of their sum a national bloc — a nation — occupying its fitting place among the advanced nations.

The girl — or, if you wish to generalize, woman — is a member of the human family, completing the rest of its members, no less than they in weight or in importance. Woman is not one of man's ribs, as the ancients supposed, nor was she created for his amusement, as they taught. She is a living germ which it never occurred to nature to separate from man; rather nature opened the field wide for her to grow in its garden, feeding upon its bounty, so that she in her turn might nourish the potential of mankind and form together with man a society which, should she neglect it, has its level shattered and its usefulness annulled. If woman shirks responsibility, she opens the way for man to deny her her rights, or she is then compelled to content herself with whatever he concedes to her as favor and largesse.

And now, what are the girl's rights and her responsibilities in her world? If we single out the educated among girls, this does not mean that we wish to slight the due of their companions whom ill fortune has condemned to deprivation of learning and culture — for the girl in this East has remained until now with clipped wing, her rights devoured, deprived of the food of mind and spirit, society looking upon her as a plaything to be toyed with, or as a female to breed from and to be made a nurse for children.

But after every slumber comes an awakening. The East has begun to wake, and our proof of it is this women's movement now standing in most of its lands, and the girl's entry into the battle of life, fighting for her rights without shirking her duties. It is without doubt a blessed movement, which we hope will spread through all the Eastern lands, subduing difficulties and scoffing at traditions. Then the East will be able to say to the West: "Here I am, shaking off the dust of the old with which you so long reproached me; I enter a race in which I was once the front-runner through the centuries of history, and my mind will not rest until I have dug up from the depths of history former glories that restore to me mastery and pride." What, then, is your part, young woman, in the new world? What is your duty, how far does the responsibility laid upon you reach, and what rights do you possess for attaining your ends?

Perhaps you know all this better than I; but let me examine the matter with you, that together we may reach the desired goal.

The world has become far wider than it was in the past — and I do not mean material width. The area of the world has not increased: the seas are still seas and the dry land is still dry land, and the number of inhabitants has not greatly increased, thanks to wars, catastrophes, and epidemics. But the world has grown in its spiritual, social, and economic breadth; new horizons have been opened in it that demand the doubling of work to double production. In consequence of all this, ambitions have multiplied, rivalry has set in among individuals and peoples, the systems of states and nations have diverged, and a splintering of interests, of civilizations, and of cultures became inevitable — threatening the world with wars of destruction, or with economic and cultural struggle, or the "civilizing" struggle, in the language of colonialism.

Now that the fields of work have multiplied, it is impossible for man to undertake them all. So he looked toward woman, calling her to take a share; and she looked toward him with a reproachful eye, without rancor and without gloating. Woman does not lack the sentiment of loyalty and fidelity; and the two hooked their little fingers in a pledge to perform the common duty for the general good.

Neither the girl nor the woman fell short in work during the war; upon her shoulders lay duties and responsibilities which she discharged well. Millions of them were in public service — physicians, nurses, clerks, workers in the factories, tillers in the fields, recruits for the entertainment services, and leaders of bands — and there were even those among them who bore arms and plunged deep into the trenches, their womanhood not hindering them from joining battle and storming hardships.

The best of the ideals to which the new world looks up is order,

and the best soldier able to perform the task of trusty guardian over order is the girl — she is an effective member in the planting of the ideals, whether she be in her home, or her office, or her hospital, or any other occupation she has taken up.

And among the ideals aimed at by the lovers of peace is freedom of opinion, of thought, and of belief — and the fight against the enslavement of men by men.

Here is a field for the girl to take her share of the work. First of all, she must free herself from the traditions and illusions which in the past made of her a follower, not one followed. These traditions — and allow me to say also the religions — bound the girl with strangling bonds, which she accepted now under compulsion, now by choice, because the teachings of metaphysical philosophy planted in her an inner feeling of incompetence and of defeat — what is expressed in English as the Inferiority Complex. If the girl does not free herself from this inner feeling, she will remain a secondary member of society. But the intellectual revolution of today has emboldened the girl, for whom it has become impossible to accept any wrong done to her, whether in rights or in duties. And duties, with the responsibilities that branch from them, are nothing but one of the rights of man; and the best of people is he whose responsibilities are many, and who bears them with gladness and courage.

In our Arab East there are the germs of malignant social diseases which must be uprooted — the germs of ignorance, illiteracy, sectarianism, feudalism, the multiplying of classes, and their like; and in such matters the working girl can make an effective contribution.

I say it to you once more, young woman: the new world lays upon you weighty responsibilities, no less than the responsibilities of the young man. If you bear their burdens, you will serve yourself, your sisters, and your country, and thereby the ideals we seek; and I can only think you will act — so that you reach your goal, and the new world welcomes your endeavor.

(From a lecture at the Cooperation Club in Beirut)