How Woman Won Her Freedom

Western woman did not gain her rights by submitting petitions to the chambers of deputies alone. Every shade of freedom has its price and its particular tax.

At this historic juncture of our life, as we demand these rights, it behooves us to cast a general glance over the history of the women's renaissance in the West, that we may perhaps find in it a lesson and a guide.

The European woman did not gain her rights merely in consequence of insistent petitions raised to the chambers of deputies; her victory was the fruit of a continuous struggle over half a century, in which she shouldered the gravest of responsibilities and tasks, and thereby won the sympathy of enlightened public opinion. The first book written on the subject of the emancipation of woman was composed by the English writer "Mary Wollstonecraft" in 1792; the first legislative decree granting woman a share of her civil rights in Europe was drawn up in 1838; and the first women's congress to discuss the emancipation of woman openly and comprehensively — the first of a number of successful congresses in her defense — was held by the Society of "Friends" in New York City in 1882. Before tracing the lines along which the women's renaissance moved, we would do well to feel out the intellectual climate in which it arose.

What were the chief causes that impelled woman toward emancipation?

The idea of emancipation sprang from the philosophy of self-government, the philosophy that achieved its first practical victory in the French Revolution. The Revolution was followed by what is called in England the constitutional movement, and this movement supported the demands of the citizen, man or woman, under the shelter of personal liberty. Revolutionary literature in France and England nourished the ideas of emancipation and directed them toward new horizons, in which woman's share was great.

If we return to the pages of history, we find that governments were constituted on the basis of military force even after the French Revolution: the chief thing demanded of those in authority was bodily capacity. The ruler, or the representative of the nation, was that person whose muscles enabled him to strike down when striking had its justification. The idea of physical leadership remained dominant in Europe for a long age, but the evolution of political thought made the task of the men of power the ordering of life and the conduct of society, and woman saw that she could contribute in this field.

And when government became a system embracing family and society, and the most important qualities of the ruler became moral and intellectual, the time had come for woman to have a voice in government.

The general right to vote was at first granted only to the man who owned land. Then matters developed, and voting became the right of everyone with a public interest, and the scope of the franchise kept widening until 1918, when it embraced every male citizen who had reached the age of twenty-one. The first decree was issued in England and the other European countries in 1832, the second in 1867, and the third in 1884 — this one granted certain elementary rights to employers — and then the last, final decree in 1918. Woman's entry into the field of politics resulted in the highest degree from her desire to share in the ordering of social life.

This desire for emancipation grew stronger after the failure of the many attempts made by man alone to preserve peace in Europe. Woman by her nature hates war and fears it; she alone knows what she suffers that her nursing infants may grow and come of age — how, then, can she watch them led like sheep to the battles and sacrificed on the altar of political greed?

In the nineteenth century woman worked to keep pace with man in thought and culture, and among the upper class women's associations were formed, aiming to spread culture and art among the women. And while one lady in America was riding in her carriage to her friend's house to attend one of these meetings, she suddenly took notice of the filth of the streets she was passing through and of the state of sanitation in a quarter inhabited by a lowly working class. She entered her friend's house then and said to the assembled ladies: What would you say if we left off talking about Dante and the Divine Comedy and talked about the cleanliness of the city? The idea was welcomed, and this cultural gathering turned into a society concerned with purely social affairs. Through this society and others like it, woman struggled to fight disease and epidemics, destitution and want, as she struggled to better the life of the worker, to clean the streets, to spread juvenile courts, and to build hospitals, reformatories, and modern schools where the child might live in an atmosphere of bodily and moral cleanliness. Yes — the women's social movement known as the women's club movement, which spread through the civilized countries, is the fruit of woman's awakening to her social duty in a world that acknowledges that politics is nothing but service to society.

This is what woman accomplished in the first era of her emancipation. When, after the First World War, the League of Nations was formed and centered in Geneva, its statutes drawn up by the apostles of peace — foremost among them President Wilson — among the most telling provisions of its charter was a law making woman the equal of man in all duties and rights; that was in 1919. Woman was thereupon given the full right to elect and to be elected to any post within the said League, and her position was strengthened in an institution which in that era carried its own particular weight. In the special professional and cultural fields, woman had been given before that date rights commensurate with those of man: in 1876 she was permitted to practice medicine, law, engineering, or any liberal profession on an equal footing with man. But the practice of purely political work was forbidden her, and the doors of the diplomatic corps and of the responsible ecclesiastical offices were closed in her face; to this very day woman in England — the pioneer in the field of the women's cause — cannot perform any ecclesiastical function within the established Church.

But despite the promises of the League of Nations, woman's possibilities remained confined within narrow fields, and she went on receiving less than man in the way of pay and rewards, even when she performed the very same work. If we look back a little into history, we see that when the Industrial Revolution swept over Europe and need required the employment of thousands of women in the mills and factories, woman's lot in this was at first shameful, and she was treated with much violence and cruelty — as the books of literature have handed down to us, picturing woman as a deficient creature whom life wrongs with every shade of humiliation and abasement and loads beyond her strength and capacity.

The Industrial Revolution left its evil mark on woman, for it brought her out to the factory — exposing her health and her family to dangers. But at the same time this revolution helped to spread the idea of equality and of giving woman her full rights, for it enabled the struggling woman to call public opinion's attention to many social laws that raise the standing of the worker, woman or man.

The League of Nations, together with the International Labor Office, took to enacting laws to lighten the hardships borne by the worker

and granted woman certain privileges, taking into account her limited capacity for enduring hardships and afflictions, especially in conditions of pregnancy and sickness. Strict laws were then enacted in the civilized countries, absolutely forbidding the employment of women in the carrying of heavy loads, or in the mines, or before the huge machines; and woman kept for herself the manual work that suits her particular inclinations and capacities and safeguards her health from the fearful dangers of mechanical civilization.

Then each country began to enact laws of social insurance, and Europe to this hour concerns itself with the worker, woman or man, as no age in its history has known, to restore to him his dignity as a true citizen in a nation that respects itself. With the dawn of the nineteenth century there appeared a body of laws relating to civil marriage and divorce, granting woman security under the shelter of justice and equality. In most European countries a woman retains, if she wishes, her nationality and the protection of her government even if she marries some foreigner; and often, if she wishes, she can confer the nationality of her country on her husband. All this to strengthen her position and help her stand fast before the calamities and misfortunes that beset her private life.

In most European countries there is a law protecting the illegitimate child and at the same time protecting the mother, entrusting to her his care until his sixteenth year and granting her financial rights to help her raise him; and if she marries again, the responsibility remains upon the intended husband until the child reaches the age at which he passes under the care of the authorities.

This is a swift glance at the civil laws touching woman in the social field. But what concerns us now directly is the development of these laws into wider fields, granting woman her full political and economic rights and regarding her as the complementary half of civilization in the bosom of peoples that respect themselves.

The universal law followed by most of the peoples of Europe provided, up to the beginning of the twentieth century, that woman had no political rights whatsoever — unless she happened to be born a queen. The history of the winning of these rights joins the curious to the painful. It happened, for example, that a social congress was held in London to examine matters concerning the child and woman, and the American delegation to this congress counted some women among its members. Whereupon the English delegation refused to proceed with the discussion in the presence of the feminine element, and compelled the American delegation to keep the women in an adjoining room, separated from the main hall by some curtains, saying that the ladies might listen to the discussion, but we will on no account accept their taking part in it. This incident aroused the astonishment and disgust of the American women, who returned to America demanding the restoration of a right that had been usurped from them; and the first women's congress was held in 1838 under the patronage of the Society of "Friends" — the society that believed in the equality of woman with man and was the pioneer in the fields of higher education for women, not only in America but in the Scandinavian countries and in England. This congress was followed by violent debates in the British Parliament, the greatest of them the precious defense delivered by the famous social writer "John Stuart Mill" in 1865, in whose wake was formed a working women's committee, which went on adding members by the hundreds and the thousands and laboring night and day to enlighten public opinion. This committee was presided over with firmness and ability by Lady "Garrett," who never for a moment neglected to send petitions, circulars, and proposals to Parliament, struggling with insistence and pressure to obtain all the political rights, whole and undiminished. In the wake of this was printed John Mill's well-known book, "The Subjection of Women," which raised a violent stir in European society and was translated into several languages, so that the problem of woman passed beyond a single state or a single society and became the question of the whole continent. Yet these fierce campaigns yielded nothing more than the granting to woman of the right to elect members of the municipalities, and that was in 1869. As for Gladstone, who was Prime Minister at the time, he tried to concentrate his effort on the problems touching the Empire and neglected the domestic problems; but woman did not lose heart nor waver — she went on crying at the top of her voice in the streets, from the housetops, in gatherings and clubs, until the year 1907, when her candidacy for municipal office was achieved. And for the first time a woman took over a responsible post in the municipality of London — she was called Mrs. Anderson. Then the English country came to the gates of new elections, and the British woman woke from the effect of the last opiate to recover her strength and launch a well-ordered assault of struggle for emancipation. London witnessed an all-embracing demonstration: nearly 4,000 women massed in its streets, paralyzing traffic and upsetting order, drawing to themselves the passers-by from every side and letting them hear fiery speeches against the existing state of things. The leader of this movement and its beating pulse was Mrs. "Pankhurst," who in consequence endured, with a band of her friends, humiliation and pursuit and at last prison, where she went on hunger strike; and her act had its glorious effect upon the women strugglers — indeed upon public opinion as a whole. The newspapers, opposition and non-opposition alike, launched a fierce campaign against the authorities; you could hear the preachers, the professors in the institutes, the men of affairs, and the leaders of thought rebuking the government for its deed and demanding the emancipation of woman. The fires of a civil war nearly blazed up when the women marched

in a second demonstration farther-reaching in effect and wider in scope than the first. When the police barred its way, the women took to boats and sailed down the breadth of the Thames, in rebellion against regulations and statutes — it was like a violent assault that shook the pillars of Britain. The Prime Minister of the day, Lord "Asquith," was among the fiercest opponents of the women's cause, but his opposition and that of his supporters went for nothing before this overwhelming wave of public opinion rallying to right and justice.

In 1913 the government tried to find a solution it could rest content with while preserving its dignity: it appointed from the members of the House a committee to cooperate with the supreme women's council, and this committee, under the chairmanship of Lord Lytton, submitted its first report, insisting on the necessity of giving woman her full rights. Then, when the sun of 1914 rose, and the European atmosphere grew electric, and black clouds gathered foretelling a savage war, woman's agitation subsided in England as it subsided in the other countries; she united for the sake of the national interest, and during the years of the war woman proved that she is man's greatest helper, standing by him and holding fast with him before calamities and horrors — and this stand of hers had the farthest-reaching effect on the clear victory she won some years later.

No Quarter

Yet the campaign of emancipation did not for all that come to a complete halt; the meetings and the petitions went on. At one of these meetings, while one of the fervent speakers was uttering fiery words on the necessity of complete emancipation and its effect on the country and on woman's spirit, Lloyd George, then Prime Minister, stopped her and began to speak calmly, deliberately, and with much patience of the need to go slowly, to leave this problem to an unnamed day, and for woman to concern herself with the present situation — whereupon our fervent speaker could do nothing but rise and say: "If you were my husband, I would slip you poison!" And Lloyd George answered her with the calm and deliberation for which he was known: "If I were your husband, madam, I would slip the poison to myself!"

The Right to Vote

In 1917 Lloyd George's government gave the full right to vote to married women and housewives of thirty years of age and above, and in 1918 woman was granted the right to stand for Parliament; the first woman elected to the English Parliament was the Countess Astor. Then in 1928 a new decree was drawn up, granting woman all political, civil, and social rights and closing the history of a stubborn war that woman had waged for her complete freedom. Most of the European countries acknowledged this law with surpassing speed; Spain lagged behind,

and France, Italy, Greece, and Switzerland. The lag of the Latin countries sprang from their fear of the power of the clergy over woman; but woman's lag in Switzerland comes of the Swiss woman's own indifference to this purely political side. And I should like to say here a special word, in this connection, about the country which today preserves the utmost degree of personal liberty and true democracy, and which has not granted woman her full rights. The Swiss woman enjoys every possibility and every civil right; her opinion is sought, and she is represented in a non-governmental capacity on the various committees; she is responsible for organizing the juvenile courts, the prisons, and the reformatories; and her opinion is taken first of all in the field of education and instruction and in matters touching social problems. Were the Swiss woman to obtain the right to vote, it would not add a hair's breadth to the ample share of true freedom she enjoys, nor would it bind the wise political order along which this blessed country moves. When all the governments of the world become like the government of Switzerland, woman will have no more demands and no more desires; her single care will be to remain in understanding with the man who respects her as she respects him, and believes in her as she believes in him... But how shall we come by this, we who are still in a backward feudal age — an age ruled not by the wise, conscious man but by the grasping, usurping man, and in a nation governed not by enlightened action but by raging, clamorous nerves.

Woman's Fundamental Wish

In most countries of the world woman has obtained her political freedom, whole and undiminished; she has played the part of minister and of deputy and has passed through all the principal offices. But her essential work is still incomplete, because she has not been able to secure peace in a world still driven by man's greed and his grasping.

Woman's office, her fundamental desire today, is not to jostle man in post after post and to compete with him in the fields of business; it is to obtain that longed-for world — the world of goodness, peace, and righteousness, under a society that holds high principles sacred, where the strong feels with the weak and the master with the mastered, in a world where blessings are distributed with much justice and wisdom, and where the citizen receives care as an individual with his place in a respected nation. And we here, sons of the Arab lands in general and sons of Lebanon in particular — what is our concern in this constructive movement? It concerns us first of all to attain a degree of progress befitting the other nations; for we, like the other young nations, wish to secure the good things that come of a movement aiming at the universal good.

I am one of those who hope that woman will be given her full rights in Lebanon — not because every woman deserves it, just as not every man deserves it, but because there is in Lebanon in particular a vital feminine element that has fought, more than the man, and goes on fighting, for social justice. And the truth, as I see it, is that the great mass of men and women in Lebanon will not be able to vote in an atmosphere of disinterested knowledge and assured sincerity until a period of practical trial has passed.

But let woman vote; let her flounder as man flounders in this deep abyss of swaying, unsettled standards. Let her throw herself into this wide flood whose depth has no bounds, which we are crossing as a young nation at the beginning of its life — let her err, and perceive her error, and correct it, and walk in the darkness until the darkness turns to light. Come, let us bear together the burdens of the responsibilities of power; come, let us try our luck in this raging arena — perhaps we shall see what you have not been able to see. I do not doubt for a moment that among the weakest foundations of government in our country is what we touch every day: the indifference toward the good, productive elements that are the pillar and substance of the nation; the injustice and oppression we touch in the order of marriage, home, and family; the misery we touch in the life of the cherished child, and the scattered forces and talents sacrificed on the altars of neglect. And there is no doubt whatever that woman, if given the right to share in government, will create that bond between people and government, reminding the men of power of the purely human duty laid upon their shoulders and proclaiming before them that power is a charge, not an honor, and that governing is work and sacrifice.

And can we hope for good except in common, productive work — in work where efforts join hands for the universal good?

But let me warn woman of one thing I regard as very grave in this campaign she is leading. I should like to remind her that every shade of freedom she obtains has a heavy price, and every blessing she enjoys has its particular tax. The wiser course is that she not demand her political rights before she is certain that she can pay the price of these rights — and that she can keep them even after the price is paid.