Woman: On the Margin of Legislative Decree No. 6

On the margin of Legislative Decree No. 6

On the eve of the promulgation of Legislative Decree No. 6, which provides for granting the woman who holds a certain degree of education the right to vote, I found myself in the company of a lady "lawyer."

And behold, this lady lawyer was clapping and exulting, wishing and vowing, calling for the dissolution of the Chamber at once so as to prove to man her capacity for conducting the electoral campaign in favor of the person she supports; and she concluded by thanking the government, and God, that she personally is among those who may vote and be voted for.

A jubilation which, if it proves anything, proves selfishness, and boastfulness, and ignorance of what the human right means — that right which may not be curtailed or divided, and which makes no distinction between races and colors. And it proves how our educated woman is enamored of the love of display — that love which is the deadliest plague in our cultivated women's society.

Learning is upbringing and morals; a spirit that rises above falsehood; a proclamation of the right of self-determination for the individual, the people, and the nation; and an instrument of rapprochement and understanding between every one of the homeland's communities.

Woman is a human being

And the human being has the right to express his opinion in the civilized popular assemblies.

To deprive the illiterate woman of her right to choose the nation's representatives is a dagger in her breast — that breast from which burst forth the wellsprings of life for the children of life — and a stab at the dignity of that soul which still floods humanity with an outpouring of tenderness, mercy, and love.

The imbecility of learning in the land of learning

An educated man who harnesses his learning to his ambitions, harmful to society, and to lording it over its poor sons; and another, illiterate and half-witted, who carries censers before the threshold of every idol — this man has the right to vote.

While an illiterate woman who spends her night awake at her infant's bed, who cares for her children and rears them well, planting in their young hearts the fruits of virtue, good works, and self-respect, and of doing no harm to others — whose heart knows no evil, who carries peace to everyone who has known her, wherever she is found and wherever she alights —

this woman has no right to vote. And here is the farce of farces.

I ask the Lebanese woman, with her associations and her parties, from the pages of the magazine "The Woman's Voice": has woman obtained her right — her whole right — in Legislative Decree No. 6?? Is this limited right the goal and the end of her struggle through centuries upon centuries?