How I Understand My Duties as a Woman Citizen

There is no doubt that this question has taken on an importance that did not attach to it before woman was acknowledged to have political rights — though woman, in my eyes, was never on any day anything other than a citizen, with all the duties this quality imposes upon her and all the rights it confers upon her, rights that long remained wholly usurped.

And I was obliged to say wholly usurped, for the rights have not been given in full: the illiterate woman who has been denied these rights is a citizen too, whose rights are still withheld from her; and thus these rights have remained partly usurped. I wish to declare, at the opening of this word of mine, that everything I shall say tonight on the subject of how I understand my duties as a woman citizen — and how I understand my rights as well — applies equally to the illiterate woman; and how I wish we could be done with any such classification, that there were no room for the existence of illiterate men and illiterate women, and that we had carried out the spread of education in a form that reaches all the children of Lebanon and befits this homeland.

I said that this subject has, without doubt, taken on an importance that did not attach to it before, because people today have begun to look at woman through a lens other than yesterday's; for she was, from the official standpoint, on the margin of life, though from the actual standpoint she was otherwise. And people have begun waiting for woman to enter the very heart of life, as though she had never entered it, and watching to see what her conduct will be, to see whether she is worthy of occupying this new position, or whether she will fail in this experiment. On this basis it was natural that I should not take up the heart of the subject — how the woman citizen is to understand her duties and her rights — before addressing to her a passing word touching her personal conduct in this regard. It is a matter of formalities, but it is, as I see it, important in any case, in that it may give an opening to those who seek to disfigure this progressive step, which tends toward the equality of woman with man, to wage a campaign of blackmail and clamor against woman, if she does not grasp the importance of maintaining a sober and serious conduct in this delicate stage through which she is passing.

I say this because I know, among women, some who see the granting of political rights as a thing leading in truth to unbecoming displays of mannishness — truly unbecoming — or to excess in repudiating traditions which woman has not repudiated even in the most emancipated countries. Woman is adorned in her daily life by her natural delicacy, and her gentle sobriety casts over her a color of dignity that is welcome and obligatory.

I said in her daily life, and that indication of mine was deliberate, for I do not wish it to be understood from my word — having pointed to woman's natural delicacy and her welcome gentleness — that I deny her the right to be a fighting element when the need arises; for in her being a fighting element lies the cohesion of her social and her national personality alike.

The sum of it is that there is no need for woman to slide into the pitfalls of the sudden leap on the plea that we have become men's equals; such things do not arise at all where the enjoyment of political rights is concerned. And everything of this kind — the kind of formalities — must keep to its place until historical evolution takes its natural course.

It is a hurried word I wished to address to the Lebanese woman on this occasion, so that matters may settle into their proper place, and so that the discussion of this cause may not be put on the basis of silly conditions and considerations that lie at the margin of the subject's essence. Its essence concerns the question of the woman citizen's understanding of her duties and her rights.

As for her duties — and they are duties that apply to the man citizen as they apply to the woman citizen — they rest, from the standpoint of principle, on the basis of her being an element of good in this homeland: an element of building, not an element of demolition, an element that takes its inspiration, in all it does and in all the activity it expends, from the interest of this dear homeland. From the practical standpoint, her understanding of her duties as a citizen imposes upon her respect for the laws and adherence to their texts; so let her work from this day to remove a hateful mentality that still rules this country — the mentality that regards the violation of the laws and the making light of them as proof of influence and leadership. She must realize that in the forefront of the qualities of the true citizen stands his care to keep within the bounds of the laws standing in the country in which he lives,

while knowing that it is also his duty to work so that these laws come to be as fully conformable as possible to the interest of the citizens; so he takes care that none reach the hall of legislation but those persons in whom sincerity of resolve to serve the causes of the nation may be expected.

And so, if the woman citizen wishes today to demonstrate that she understands her duties with a serious, deep understanding, and that she feels the sense of solidarity among the members of one homeland — that solidarity which is the great pillar in the existence of nations — then she must work with insistence and steadfastness for the coming of a law that acknowledges her illiterate sister's explicit right to be a full citizen, satisfying every condition.

As for the rights of the woman citizen, they require first of all a correct grasp of them on the part of the legislators, so that the laws are framed on the basis of securing these rights to her and to every citizen.

The field here is wide and ramified, so that

plunging into it and entering into its details appears impossible in these few minutes. Yet we can point out that in the forefront of these rights stands the citizen's right to voice his opinion on the laws that govern his affairs, and his right to work to bring those responsible to take his will and his opinion into account — within, of course, the compass of the methods sanctioned by the country's constitution in letter and in spirit.

And since we are engaged in discussing the rights of the woman citizen, we would do well to confine our discussion to these rights as they concern woman.

The government has adopted the principle of acknowledging woman's exercise of her rights as a citizen; and so it has come to stand in the forefront of women's rights that the means be provided them by which they can exercise these rights in practice. Among these means is the spreading of a network of free day nurseries, so that the mother of a household may reconcile her tasks as a mother with her tasks as a citizen, and so that the principle of acknowledging this equality does not remain ink on paper; for it is well known that most women of the middle and poor classes cannot carry out the two tasks together unless care for their little ones is provided and they are placed safe from the dangers of the alleys and the dangers of leaving them without any care at all.

Among these means also is opening the way before women to enter the fields of professional specialization, so that the doors of the professions and trades are not shut in their faces; thereby the discrimination in opportunities between woman and man will disappear — that discrimination whose every trace the international organizations are striving to erase, so that the principle of equality adopted by the Charter of the United Nations may be fully realized.

Among the most important manifestations of the removal of this discrimination, also, is the application of equality of wages between the sexes, so that man and woman receive an equal wage for equal work.

Among the rights of women citizens also, now

that the principle of their equality with man has been adopted for them, is that they enter the various fields of activity — such as the diplomatic corps, the corps of the judiciary, and the high posts of the state — and that, of course, on the rule of the qualifications that must be present in men as a condition of their entering these fields.

We do not accept indulgence toward woman when the question is a question of qualifications. We have asked for equality and we want it real — in rights and in duties as well; and we want it to rest on a real foundation of actual parity between woman and man in qualification and in diligence.