Dr. Jamal Karam Harfush
Dr. Jamal Karam Harfush
Woman in Lebanon still has many stages before her prior to demanding the vote. Her culture is still deficient and superficial, and nothing will raise its level except raising the level of the government schools, so that the various classes of the people may benefit, and so that woman may understand that she is to undertake the exercise of her political rights only in order to serve her first mission — namely, preserving the integrity of the home and the family. In the light of this truth, woman in Lebanon has the right to exercise her political rights in full; but this will come about only when woman has become enlightened, aware, and sure of herself. I do not want her to exercise her political rights now, while she is poorly equipped, and so swerve from performing her first mission and err where man has erred!
When women lawyers plead the causes of women and children; and when the specialists in women's diseases and children's diseases are women doctors; and when the educated woman has entered the administrative departments and taken over the responsible posts in the municipalities, the Ministry of Health, and public relief — then woman will have the right to demand her political rights in full, and she will have imposed her position on man and on society.
2 — Mrs. Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari
In Syria today, as in every Arab country, there is an elite of ladies who could shoulder the burdens of political work. As for me, I believe the suitable time has not
yet come for the Syrian woman to take part in exercising political rights, or to demand these rights with violent, heated insistence. Woman must first prove that her culture has reached the fitting stage that qualifies her to carry these burdens. All the Syrian woman need do now is strive to achieve that, and wait until the number of educated women is sufficient, so that a select class can be formed, highly cultured, able to express its views well in its national tongue first and in at least one foreign language. And I believe our wait will not be long...
3 — Miss Zahia Kaddoura
No. The Lebanese woman today is not, in general, prepared to exercise her political rights in full, and that for the following reasons:
1 — The internal political situation in Lebanon is chaotic; because of it, voting ought to be
restricted to the educated class of men — not that all of us women should be brought in and so make bad matters worse, multiplying disorder and confusion and committing the many errors that men commit today.
2 — In Lebanon there are ladies who, as individuals, are outstanding and equal to all the rights that the cultured, aware man exercises; but our women as a whole are still, at bottom, in the state of ignorant illiteracy that drifts with the current and embraces no sound national creed.
3 — Religious and doctrinal differences are many in Lebanon; they leave us in a state of disunity and of little confidence in ourselves and in our neighbors — and all these work to weaken the national spirit which must always be the basis of our exercise of political rights.
When the Lebanese woman has worked to fulfill her first mission
in life — purging every moral disintegration, unifying national creeds, and killing sectarian rancors — then she may demand her political rights, and then she may exercise them with awareness, and not err where man has erred...