Miss "In'am al-Saghir" is one of Lebanon's highly cultivated young women. She has lately returned from her journey to Europe carrying within her, from those lofty climes, a feeling all goodness, ardor, and release, which she offers to this small country, Lebanon. In this article of hers she presents a splendid model of the Swedish woman, as she came to know her through her visit to that country.

"The Editorial Desk"

At the opening of the thirteenth century, the father and the husband alone had the right to decide the affairs of the family, and the home was the sole field for woman's work—it was her king-dom, and she was its crown and its jewel. In the year 1734 a law was issued that altered this position of woman a little, and in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries new opinions came in concerning the status of women. With the coming of the industrial revolution and the shift of occupations that followed it—from the home to the factory—these occupations passed out of woman's hands; but scarcely had she begun to fit herself to

this different program of life than she began to demand and to insist, and at last she found reassurance when in 1772 she obtained certain rights: widows, and those women who had no provider, were permitted to sell tobacco, and afterward they were permitted to sell candles. As for the unmarried, the demand for political rights was the concern of every one of them and her single goal. Fredrika Bremer pointed, in her literary and poetic writings, to woman's need of freedom. Between 1856 and 1858 the Parliament resolved to grant unmarried women who had reached the age of twenty-five political rights; but this law kept girls back from marriage, so it was repealed between 1872 and 1882, only to return anew in 1889 and grant this right to the woman who had reached twenty-one years.

In the middle of the nineteenth century woman was permitted to engage in certain professions: she was first a teacher, then a worker in the telegraph and post office, and after that came women dentists and holders of higher university degrees, and women doctors and lawyers graduated alongside women engineers. There is now no door closed in the face of the Swedish lady, for she has the right to enter all fields of public employment except the office of heir to the throne and the crown, or that of priest in the church. This was by virtue of a law that appeared in 1923 but was not applied before January 1, 1925.

Although the number of women in Sweden exceeds the number of men, the Swedish woman—who obtained political rights like the man in 1921, that is, the right that permits her to elect and to be elected—despite this, we see that she does not take part in elections in the same proportion as the man. In 1940, for example, we find that 72.6% of the men entitled to

vote cast their ballots, while the figure for women did not exceed 68.1%. In the elections of 1944, 74.4% of the men elected their representative in the Parliament, while the corresponding proportion for women was 69%. And of the 380 members of the Parliament in 1946 there were twenty-two women. The first woman to enter the executive council was Professor Karin Kock, who was appointed to the post of minister without portfolio but was styled Minister of Economy, 1947.

And although all the doors of work stand wide open before the Swedish woman, there are several problems still under study and in need of a just solution—among them the question of equal pay for equal work, for the man still earns more than the woman for performing work in which a woman shares with him. Woman has lately demanded several things, among them the following:

First — the abolition of the husband's guardianship. Second — that each of the two spouses have the right to determine his own property in the economic partner-ship. Third — that each of the two spouses must share in the family's expenses, each in proportion to his income. Fourth — equal rights over the children. Fifth — the necessity that the woman married to a foreigner keep her nationality, provided she lives in the country.

She has obtained some of these demands. In 1921 a new marriage law appeared, providing in certain of its parts for the equality of the two spouses in deciding the destiny of the family and whatever concerns its affairs. Economic questions were likewise settled in the same way—that is, each indi-vidual is responsible for his own private debts—and it obliged each

of the two parties to maintain the financial bond in matters held in common. Thus, in case of