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,
Emily Fares Ibrahim
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,'