In [...] One Form or Another [...] Woman

I am no opponent of political rights for woman. Every step toward equality — which for woman is still a distant dream — is undoubtedly in her interest, and in the interest of the country. But when I see how the man among us misuses his political rights, disfiguring them with bribery, with ignorance, and with blind obedience to the chiefs, I am appalled at what I see of the degeneration of the democratic system at the hands of our men; I picture these same defects doubled by the votes of women, and imagine the additional confusion that this change would bring; and then I wish that woman would postpone the demand for her political rights until the population, men and women, reaches a higher level of political maturity and a fuller measure of civic culture, so that we content ourselves for the time being with the man's vote and confine ourselves to one of the two evils. As for giving political rights to educated women only, that would be counted an injustice against woman, for in that case political rights would have to be withdrawn from the hand of the illiterate man, who represents no small number of our men. Accordingly, before pressing the demand for our political rights, we ought to prepare the ground for them logically, by insisting on the demand that illiteracy be wiped out among women and men alike, and that civic and political culture be spread among the population in all their classes and kinds.

There are still in the world — according to the latest report given out by the United Nations — fourteen states that deny woman her political rights. Of the fourteen, six are Arab states, that is, about half the total. And among the seven Arab states, Syria stands alone in giving woman a truncated right in elections.

Woman has been politically emancipated in the Far East, in all of Europe except Switzerland, and in all the American states except those of Central America. As for our women, they are not merely deprived of political rights; in all the other civil rights and in the laws of personal status they are still subject to the statutes of the Middle Ages.

Our civil law does not regard woman as a person capable of independence, but makes her a dependent upon man in all the stages of her life and denies her every right to equality. In the courts, a woman's testimony is refused unless two women agree upon a single testimony — and the wrong in that, and the belittling of woman's personality, are plain enough. Worse still is the law of inheritance, which gives woman half her brother's right in the inheritance of the parents; and this explicit preference often leads on to her being deprived of the whole inheritance. I say this on the evidence of the inquiry carried out by one of the women's committees during the women's conference of UNESCO last year. One hundred and fifty women from educated families of middling circumstances were questioned on the subject, and it was found that only 43% of those women had been given their lawful rights in inheritance, that is, half the rights of the brother, while the rest obtained nothing, or received only some of their rights. Nor are the rights of the wife any better off, for she inherits an eighth of what her husband leaves if she has a child, and otherwise a quarter of the inheritance. What this law means is that it places the widow in a position in which she is unable to live independently unless her husband was possessed of vast wealth. She must depend for her livelihood on her children or some of her kin, and must trust to their affection and their good intentions — though these two virtues are scarce among the children of men.

Someone may say: man is the breadwinner of the family, and the law makes him responsible for the maintenance of women if they do not work or possess no wealth. But at what price does man perform this duty? What a debt of obligation he lays upon the woman who, as he sees it, lives at his expense! And how many are the men who do it with good grace, without grumbling or tyranny?

There is another matter that calls for attention. It is that the number of women working outside their homes, especially among the girls, increases day by day. To verify this we have only to visit the factories, the shops, the institutes of education, the offices, the hospitals, the farms, and the other places of work. There are statistics compiled by a group of members of a women's association last year: they found that the number of working girls of the middle class is not less than fifty percent, while the women of the working class, one and all, labor like the man in the factories, the farms, and the establishments. Indeed, in some workshops they saw that the number of women was double the number of men.

Secondly — the woman who does not work outside the house ordinarily works in the house. She is the governess and the nurse, the seamstress, the cook, the laundress, and the manager of the household. The number of true parasites is in fact very small, no greater than the number of millionaires. And I cannot imagine a man who consents to support his mother or his wife or his sister without requiring her to do the work of the house, whereby she stands to him in the place of a servant. In such a case she has earned her food and her clothing, with nothing owing in return. His supporting her involves no loss whatever, and there is no pretext or argument to justify depriving her of the right of equality in inheritance.

Thirdly — man's preferment over woman in the matter of inheritance, or his seizure of the whole fortune to the exclusion of the women, often has an evil effect upon his character. This deification makes him dependent and idle, or selfish and arrogant, inclined to tyrannize over the members of the family just as he tyrannizes over the whole of the inheritance, or the most of it. And so long as woman is a dependent upon him, unable to live by herself, the relation of each to the other becomes a relation of wariness and dissembling, like the relation of master to slave. Each humors the other out of need of him, not because he sees in the arrangement an ideal solution. If many women were given the choice, they would prefer to live independently — if the law were fair to them, or if they were able to support themselves. How many a father has died leaving behind him a wife and daughters, whereupon the uncles and the relatives came to dispute the inheritance with them, set themselves up as guardians, and forced them into a life of privation, that they themselves might enjoy money they had never toiled to gather.

In addition to the foregoing, we find that people's attitude toward woman takes its shape from the law's attitude toward her. They see no harm in wronging her and cheating her, in conformity with the double rule that counts her right as half the right of man. Thus her misfortune becomes double. And one wrong draws another after it.

The laws of inheritance under which we proceed were suitable in the tribal ages, when the members of the tribe formed a compact unit, their livelihoods held in common, and their interests likewise. The chief of the tribe was then anxious to keep all his possessions in the hands of the males of his clan, that the tribe might remain proud in its possessions and unassailable, and that nothing of those possessions should slip away to the strange families into which the daughters ordinarily pass by marriage. But in this age, when the clan system is dissolving and the system of the small independent family — composed of the father, the mother, and the children only — is spreading, it is in the interest of the man who desires independence to help woman, be she his mother or his sister or his wife, to secure her economic independence and to avoid living upon others: first, by giving her rights equal to his own in inheritance; second, by encouraging her toward liberating work and smoothing its paths before her. In this way he does justice to her and to himself, and delivers her from the inferiority complex that so often causes him trouble in his relations with her. And then his family life becomes freer, clearer in its atmosphere, and less exposed to troubles and disturbances.

There remains a third kind of the social injustice which the laws inflict upon our women. It is the law that regards the killing of a woman in defense of honor, or for the safeguarding of reputation, as a trifling offense that does not criminalize its perpetrator or expose him to stern punishment. It is obvious that the source of this law is neither justice nor natural right, for the smallest measure of reflection shows us that the crime of the adulterer is no less grave than the crime of his partner. But public opinion acquits the man and fastens the whole responsibility upon the woman, for no reason except that she is ruled, held weak, and subject to man. He loads upon her what he pleases and demands of her what he does not demand of himself. He commits what forbidden things he will, and calls her to account for the smallest slip. Had he set her a good example, the matter would be lighter; but the straying woman is precisely the one who lives in an atmosphere of stifling pressure, or in an atmosphere of moral decay that makes going astray easy for her and encourages her in it. And yet, if she strays, she is slaughtered as ewes are slaughtered, and no blame falls upon her killer, and no sin. By my life, this is a custom from the ages of savagery, which civilized man had no right to apply to the slaves he bought with his money or enslaved in war; how then may it be applied to woman, over whom he has made himself guardian? If she goes wrong under his charge, he is responsible for her corruption, and he deserves the punishment before her.

All the civil laws to which I have pointed were enacted in an age other than ours. They are no longer fit today; rather, with the change in the manner of living and the enlightenment of the women of this age, they have become a source of ills and troubles for men and women alike. The woman who feels a revolt within her, and sees that, measured against man, she is wronged and robbed of her rights, is bound to show her revolt in one form or another. She takes revenge upon her surroundings by striving to dominate those around her, or by her quick fretfulness, or by turning to cunning and deceit and the rest of the weapons of the weak and the resentful.

In the book 'The Other Sex' by Simone de Beauvoir, the author observes that the problem of woman does not differ from the problem of the workers and the problem of the Negroes of America. All the members of these three groups feel the pain and demand fair dealing. It is as though she were saying: beware the vengeance of the wronged. He may bear his condition for a time, but before long he rises up, as the workers rise up in many places in the world. Nor is Simone de Beauvoir the only one who warns men of the anger of the deprived classes that have begun to open their eyes to the light.

Some time ago our government took several measures which testify to its desire for progress, and for bringing the people out of the darkness of the remote past. The first measure was the prohibition of firing shots at celebrations and feasts. The second was the campaign against begging and the punishment of beggars. Recently there was laid before it a bill for the equality of woman with man in inheritance, and the bill still lies folded away in some file or other, awaiting discussion. May it find among the responsible men a sufficient number of supporters who will succeed in passing it, making of it the first link in a chain of important social reforms that will bring us nearer to the level of the emancipated peoples.