Mr. Najati Sidqi conducted a survey among certain women workers in the women's field, turning on four questions in which the fundamental problems of the Lebanese woman are comprised. We publish here these questions, together with the first part of the replies to them, for our gracious readers' perusal:
The Questions:
1) Does the cultured Lebanese woman perform her social-reform mission to the fullest?
2) What are the problems the Lebanese woman faces in the literary field, and how can she overcome them?
3) What are the most prominent problems of upbringing in the Lebanese home, and how are they to be solved?
4) Does the Lebanese woman's participation in public life constitute a danger to her domestic existence?
(1) The cultured Lebanese woman takes the utmost care over public affairs and participates actively in the various branches of social activity. She has marked social inclinations, a boundless readiness for sacrifice, and she performs her social-reform mission so far as her time, her means, and her culture allow. The greatest witness is the number of associations and charitable institutions that have arisen among us and that carry out noble tasks whose material and spiritual effect we can feel in the strengthening of social consciousness and the fostering of moral virtues in society, in all the various forms of piety and charity.
If the Lebanese woman's feeling is nourished it will blossom, and she will take an ample share in the social revival by which woman's mission — the mission of goodness, love, and beauty — is fulfilled.
(2) The Lebanese woman has scarcely any books devoted to her or examining her affairs — only the merest trifle. She has not written about herself, nor has man written about her, and she has not been prepared from childhood to read abundantly, as is the case in the West.
The Lebanese woman takes eagerly to reading fiction, for she sees in it a great world overflowing with the colors of sensuous, moral, and psychological beauty, one that requires of her no mental exertion; so she satisfies her natural inclinations with the experiences of life it contains.
She likes also to look through the various magazines
adorned with pictures and colors and written in easy language. As for the woman of high culture, she takes up all manner of scientific and literary subjects, ancient or modern, including works in foreign languages. Hope is great that the Lebanese woman will advance in the literary field, since the women's renaissance has begun to develop, desiring to keep pace with man in all branches of activity; and this is warrant that what her soul longs for — the acquisition of the sciences and the arts — will be achieved, so that she will compose, or translate what she needs from Europe and America, in the light of the Lebanese environment.
(3) The most prominent problem of upbringing in the home is the failure to prepare husband and wife to make of their marriage a partnership founded on affection, love, and unity of mind, together with a correct understanding of the physical and mental training of the child's nature. For woman is no longer prepared to be merely a housewife and a mother.
Today certain colleges and higher schools have begun to introduce into their curricula psychology, marital relations, hygiene, and other requisites of family life.
May we in the very near future pluck the fruits of these valuable lessons in modern Lebanese upbringing.
(4) Yes indeed. The participation of the