Women's Week
It is a week for which the Lebanese Women's League prepared the way, inviting the brilliant lawyer Mr. Salah Labaki to deliver a public pleading on behalf of the Lebanese woman and the legitimacy of her demand for equality with man in civil rights.
Mr. Labaki delivered his defense at the Military Club before the League's invited guests, and the esteemed newspaper al-Amal published its complete text, so that it stands as a scholarly document which the women demanding woman's rights in the Arab countries must not fail to read.
Mr. Labaki spoke first of the Eve of "the poets" and the Eve of "the man" upon whom she imposed her will from the very first hour, so that he
Mr. Salah Labaki
disobeyed God and obeyed her. Then he traveled through history and the civilizations, examining her rights from "the first law" onward, passing through the Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Phoenician civilizations, then the Greek and the Roman, then the Christian and the Islamic, down to the eighteenth century and the nineteenth. He pictured the stormy sessions in the French Parliament on the day the first woman licensed in law asked that her name be entered on the roster of the bar association — until he reached the Charter of the United Nations, the law upon which every women's bloc demanding woman's rights takes its stand, and which the states concerned consecrated only out of their desire to put an end to lame progress, to deficient advancement, and to one-eyed knowledge...
And he addressed the women with an enthusiasm beyond all enthusiasm, saying:
It pleases us — it pleases men — to make of woman a queen of fashion, a princess of rumors, and a sultana of hearts.
But to acknowledge her equality — no!
No! Because men fear for a society they have built upon the instincts of predation, lest it change or grow gentle.
No! Because with them force still triumphs over reason, and because their pride will not suffer them to see woman's superiority.
No! Because the cannon might fall silent and the stream of blood be cut off, and laurel wreaths be set upon heads other than those of conquerors and commanders, if mothers took part in deciding the fate of the world and had a say, like man's, in peace and war!
No! Because the white slave trade might be abolished.
No! Because the bonds between heaven and earth might be drawn close, and because borders might vanish — for "the mother" is a mother in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow.
And of those who say that "each sex is called to practice the work that accords with its nature," he says that they know they are Pharisees, and that the mental disparity among men did not prevent the acknowledgment of every man's right to hold every office; and he calls upon them to open the way for their wives and daughters to share in building society — perhaps they may mend what man has spoiled.
The Women's Blocs Take Their Turn
After this lecture a meeting was held at the home of Mrs. Laure Tabet, attended by the presidents and members of the women's associations who had drawn up the plan for holding Women's Week, beginning it at the opening of the new year. The leading newspapers volunteered to publish articles on the subject, and Radio Lebanon opened space in its evening program for publicity.
As for this magazine, it does its part, and continues the poll it began in the departments of the high central government.
At the Ministry of Education
It appears