Woman Around the World

In what follows is something of what I came upon during my researches in the public libraries: events touching women's affairs, and writings bearing on the discussion now going on around the question of woman's entry into the political fields:

The Economic and Social Council, by 11 votes with six abstentions, approved a momentous resolution calling on the General Assembly to draw up a covenant granting woman political rights like those of man, enabling her to vote and to be elected by the voters, and enabling her to reach all posts.

And it adopted another resolution, unanimously, recommending that all governments take the necessary measures to secure the realization of the equality of woman's rights with man's in work and in vocational training.

Yes, the Economic and Social Council has adopted this momentous resolution, and before long all the states in which this equality has not yet been achieved of their own free choice will be compelled to achieve it, in execution of international resolutions that oblige the member states to abide by their texts. I report this news without comment.

The new law enacted by the Greek Chamber of Deputies has given Greek women the right to vote at the age of twenty-one and the right to be elected at the age of twenty-five.

The heads of the bureau of the Municipal Council of Paris and of the General Council of the Seine district laid bouquets of flowers on the memorial erected on the Boulevard Kellermann in honor of French mothers, on the twenty-fourth of this month of May, on the occasion of the international Mothers' Day.

The mothers of large families were also received at the capital's hotel, the Hôtel de Ville, by the official personalities and by great crowds of the people. This celebration was presided over by Mr. Paul Ribeyre, Minister of Health, who distributed to the outstanding mothers high diplomas proclaiming their merit toward society, each granting its holder a money prize of 9,000 francs; he distributed twenty silver medals, each medal granting its holder a school grant for one of her children in the amount of 6,000 francs; and he distributed one hundred and fifty-seven bronze medals, each of them granting its holder a money prize of 3,000 francs.

Thus the French capital, in all its official and popular circles, joined in celebrating Mothers' Day; and this celebration brought practical tokens expressing the state's appreciation of the mothers' role in society, so medals, money grants, and school grants were distributed to the mothers of families rich in children.

In France, where women's activity has crossed all barriers and overcome all obstacles, there are still fields that remain forbidden to feminine aspiration.

For in France there are women judges and women notaries, women who run airports and run factories and workshops; and in France 50% of the employees of the departments concerned with the sciences of weather conditions and atmospheric events are women. Yet despite the extension of women's activity into these varied fields of public activity, there are fields of work still closed in the face of the feminine element, among them those connected with paving streets, working in the mines, laying electric wires, and the craft of glassblowing — though it should be noted that there is one woman working in this craft in France, Miss Chauvel. The Ministry of Public Works carried out a census in these fields and found only seven women working in them. Nor are there women driving the big motor coaches (the autobuses), or women working at cutting sewers. Likewise the official census has recorded no women who have filled the office of public prosecutor, nor the office of President of the Republic.

Perhaps it is merely a question of time.

It seems that the Japanese people, who remained for long generations outside the sphere of the blossoming of human thought, are today stirring to be reborn and to enter into intellectual contact with the old world and the new.

For woman in Japan is today no longer she who has no right to express her human feelings, nor she who is bound to do everything that gratifies man's selfishness in all its aspects, above all in private relations; rather she has come to develop rapidly, especially in the great cities, as is pointed out by the book "A History of Japanese Women" by the writer Kiyoshi Inoue.

Certain sentences in this book recall the spirit of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, for in paragraphs like these we find thinking such as this:

"Woman is a human being too — a truth of which many Japanese were ignorant, though it is a plain and simple truth. They would refer to woman with such sayings as: she is 'only a woman,' or 'she is the person who manages the things of the house' — and the word 'things' was placed between parentheses. They would likewise assert that woman was among man's chattels... though all this was in the days when the Japanese people as a whole were among the chattels of the ruling classes."

And the writer arrives at the conclusion that the Japanese woman today is likewise no longer she who always looked upon the justification of her existence as lying in the measure of her ability to satisfy man's whims and instincts; rather she is today educated, cultivated, conscious of her personality, and will not consent to exchange any relation with man unless she exchanges with him the feeling of love and desire.

Thus the Japanese woman, who today takes part in the political life of her country, voting and being elected, is achieving wide strides in the field of human advancement and progress, drawing nearer and nearer to her sisters in the civilized countries, so that she will not be long in reaching a level worthy of the women of the most advanced lands.

This is what is indicated by the book A History of Japanese Women, written by Kiyoshi Inoue on the subject of the Japanese woman's progress in the present stage of her history and the wide strides she has achieved in this respect — while Lebanon still hesitates and bides its time, taking no step in this direction.

Among what I came upon during my researches in the foreign papers and magazines was an article written about the Marquise Émilie du Châtelet, in the course of discussing the error of the theory which holds that woman loses much of her femininity if she practices pursuits apt to take possession of her thinking and take her out of the circle of family life. It is well known that the Marquise Émilie du Châtelet devoted herself greatly to intellectual questions, to practical studies, and to writing on mathematics and physics, and shared with France's great men their absorption in political affairs; and she loved Voltaire with a violent love that had the greatest effect on the life of the great man of letters.

So I thought I would transcribe some passages of this article, for the crushing answers it contains to the claims of those who see in woman's participation in public questions an occasion for the loss of her femininity and the keenness of her feeling.

The writer says: "Émilie du Châtelet — the learned researcher, the thinker tireless in probing the products of the mind — was no less sensible of love, no less wholly athrob with it, than those women lovers famed in history for the violence of their passion. Nor were Maria Agnesi the Italian mathematician, Sophie Kovalevsky the Russian scholar, and Clémence Royer the French philosopher any less swept along by their feeling than other loving women.

And we know from Voltaire's letters what happiness he felt in the nearness of this woman when she withdrew with him to the château of Cirey, where she had invited him to stay, at the hour when the authorities sought his arrest following the appearance of the English Letters, which the French authorities regarded as an implicit criticism of the French regime.

For he felt a sweet, serene, deep happiness in the nearness of this lady in his seclusion; and often in this seclusion the Marquise du Châtelet would likewise devote herself to writing on subjects that appear dry, far removed from what alone was supposed apt to take possession of the attention of a lady like the Marquise du Châtelet. So she composed lessons in the method of physical researches, and memoirs on nature and on the propagation of flame. She would devote herself to such intellectual matters, excelling when she wrote and choosing well when she read, exercising her mind and cultivating her intellect; she threw herself into the study of physics and mathematics, and devoted herself to translating Newton's Principles of Natural Philosophy — all this in the remote château of Cirey, in her seclusion at Voltaire's side.

Yet she possessed such tenderness, sweetness, and overflowing love that her mere presence shed over this scientific and intellectual atmosphere the fragrance of feminine charm in its gentlest and most delicate forms. For the Marquise Émilie du Châtelet was graceful without affectation, frank, free in temper, merry in disposition, pulsing with life and vitality.

If her penetrating mind and her intellectual production earned her the respect and esteem of the men of thought and science, her fragrant charm, which had lost nothing of its richness, made her the lodestar of hearts and the resting place of desires."

And at the end of his tour through the history of this woman's love, the writer of the article draws a simple, clear truth: that woman's concern with public affairs makes her lose nothing of her sweetness and tenderness; on the contrary, it gains her a richness — if the expression may be allowed — which we do not find in the woman whose life's horizons are confined to trivial things.