Political Guidance for Women

In a previous issue of this flourishing magazine I read of the state's intention to grant women their legitimate rights, following the example of certain advanced countries of the world. And since these rights will come within reach of discussion in the days and weeks ahead, we must think of that number of ladies who possess the sound moral and social qualifications for entering the political corps alongside man and working with him in all the fields of public service to the country — given what is known of our ladies' firmness of resolve, steadfastness of conviction, and abundance of culture.

Desires and inclinations differ with the difference of personalities, and these are often affected by the home environment or by local circumstances and events. Thus you find women in several groups, each group with its own opinion and its own talk: a group that speaks only of its family and its children — whether their troubles or their virtues; a group that likes to talk of fashions, visits, and invitations; while a second group adds to that criticisms of everyone and blame of the majority. Some of these groups are harmful, some wholesome, and others combine the two sides. And while yet another group speaks of the wide possibilities for raising the people and the country to a higher level and a more perfect degree, a second group inclines to talk of local and world political news — what it reads in the daily and weekly papers and what it gathers from its sphere. These two groups are the ones who will benefit from the granting of political and electoral rights, and by their ambitious efforts they will try to attract the other groups and guide them in sound political guidance.

And tomorrow, when we are called to elect or to be elected, will some sell their votes as the men do, or for the sake of a purely personal benefit? Then we shall blame ourselves, for most of us have no party orientation on whose basis to vote, and no political guidance by whose opinion to steer; the most there is, is that we are either influenced by our men or draw upon our own learning — and how scant it is! Have we begun, from this day, to plant this idea in our minds, now that this little learning has smoothed for us the paths of reading and inquiry? Have we begun to distinguish the worthless from the worthwhile, the reformer from the corrupter? Or have we left it to the days to come to fix our wavering opinion?

Why does the state not open social clubs for us, that we may substitute them for house visits and their chatter? Why does the state not help our associations to strengthen their educational and cultural programs? Will these rights be given to us so that we stand with folded arms, and they remain confined to one group of us and no other? It is our duty, then, to demand the strengthening and gathering of our elements, and generous expenditure for the raising of cultivated generations fit to receive these rights.

We demand rights and do not heed them; we demand equality with man and do not make ourselves equal. We must cast off critical gossip and the weakness that rules over us, after the example of men; we must value national feeling and the political struggle of the nation, and plant it in the hearts and minds of the daughters of our sex; we must strive and search and seek to clarify matters, and not pass over them superficially without understanding them.

Our political guidance we must attend to by the inspiration of creeds, principles, and national feeling — not submit to outside hearsay and let it rule over us. We must value the educated at their true worth, and strive that the strugglers be given their due; we must draw our politics from our national heroes and their struggle, and from the good of our people and of our downtrodden sex — from the condition of the wretched, ignorant, ailing people, from religion and lofty principles and the public interest. For this poor people has tried the men, and it now hopes for mercy and compassion from the women! — that this may be a seed for the crushing of ignorance and disease.

Would that our government were so kind as to establish, in all parts of Lebanon, cultural clubs to guide us in sound political guidance, that this might be a spur for whetting ambitions and ripening a true national consciousness, so that this homeland may rise by the efforts of its women matched equally with its men? That is the answer the days to come will bring us — and he who lives shall see.