Talk of the Month

A charming story has it that a delegate from one of the foreign states arrived to debate woman's political rights, and while he was answering the questions of a lady journalist he enumerated with pride that he had fathered thirty male children. When she asked him, "And how many girls have you fathered?" he looked at her with astonishment — a look that gave no sign of his being sure of the number of daughters in his progeny. So she said to him: "Do you not see that the first step toward equality is to count your daughters?" And the delegate went off to the meeting room and gave his vote for the convention on woman's rights.

In fact, the convention on woman's political rights in the General Assembly is very like a play in four acts.

The first act took place two years ago, when the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations met in Geneva and most of the members present opposed the principle of concluding a convention in defense of woman's political rights, saying that this would serve no practical purpose. The second act was played at the meeting of the same Council in the following year; that time the idea of the convention was not attacked, but the majority of the Council decided to await what each member state should see fit in this regard.

Then came the third act: the Economic and Social Council met in May 1952, and those assembled accepted the basic principle, thereby drawing up the wording of the convention, which begins with this phrase: "The Contracting Parties desire to affirm the principle of equality of rights between men and women as contained in the Charter of the United Nations." It then goes on to say that woman must have the right to vote on an equal footing with man; that she may, like man, be elected to parliamentary assemblies; and that she must be permitted to exercise public functions just as men do.

There remained the last act, which the General Assembly of the United Nations wrote during its session in the month of December 1952, when there was laid before it the draft of the charter that prepares for woman equality with man in political rights. The Assembly approved it by a majority of 46 votes against none, with eleven members abstaining from the vote. This charter will come into force within three months of the date of the meeting, once six states have ratified it; that is — as stated — it will oblige the signatory states to guarantee woman's political rights if they have not already done so, and it will further work for the continued respect of these rights in the countries that have in fact adopted this principle.

We do not know exactly what the position of the eleven states that abstained from voting will be. The delegates of these states may plead that these are matters which must be left for the parliaments of the states concerned to decide. What is beyond doubt is that the parliaments of these states will re-examine the position of their constitutions on woman's rights. And what will happen is that these parliaments will entrust the matter to the competent committees, and these committees will stand before one of two courses: either to decree woman's rights, after the example of the other member states of the United Nations, or to present to the United Nations a memorandum carrying within its folds an apology for not accepting the charter, for particular social reasons. What concerns us here is to know exactly what step the Arab states will take toward the charter. The pressure of the women's organizations in the Arab countries upon their governments, and their insistence on the necessity of equality, was among the most prominent of the social movements to which the year 1952 gave birth. And woman's efforts in Lebanon were crowned with success: Article 23 of Decree No. 6 granted the right to vote to women on condition that they hold the elementary certificate; it likewise opened to them the doors of parliament, and made it possible for them to be represented on the municipal councils as well. It has been decided to appoint four ladies, for the first time in Lebanon, as members of the Municipal Council of Beirut.

Syria preceded Lebanon on this path, deciding to allow those of her women who hold the elementary certificate to be voters. This right, though it is considered incomplete in its present form — since it does not permit her to stand herself as a candidate for election — is nonetheless a kindly gesture on Syria's part toward opening the fields of public life before the new Syrian woman; and what confirms this is her allowing girls to sit for the examination which the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs held for the appointment of officials in the diplomatic corps.

Whoever follows the course of events in Egypt feels optimistic that the government of Major General Muhammad Naguib is moving toward decreeing this right — otherwise, what is the meaning of its permitting the formation of women's parties there, those parties which have announced their broad programs closely bound to the political and social life of the country? Moreover, in Iraq and Jordan there are similar movements on the part of women, and Mr. Abd al-Rasul al-Khalisi, the Iraqi Minister of Justice in the government of General Nureddin Mahmud, issued a statement in which he said that the question of granting women the right to vote is now under study. We conclude from all this that woman in the Arab countries, or in most of these lands, believes with complete faith in her right, and that those in authority and the educated among them incline to adopting her view, were it not for certain delicate considerations that make some of them resort to deliberation and to taking matters slowly. Nor does this mean that woman's path in the

countries which have not proclaimed this right is strewn with roses: there are groups that oppose this principle with force and proclaim by every means their hostility to these movements, arguing with various pretexts — the most prominent being that woman's cultural condition at present does not permit it. If what they say is true, then in it lies an implicit admission of the failure of those in authority to take woman by the hand culturally and to open the fields of learning and culture before her as before man. They argue also that woman, by her physiological constitution, was not prepared for public life either, and was created for nothing beyond the sphere of the home — an opinion refuted by the decisive proof we can touch with our hands in woman's success in Europe and America and some of the Asian lands: a success of palpable effect in political, social, and cultural life.

And then, is there any doubt that woman in the Arab countries has demonstrated relative competence in the scientific, social, and cultural fields she has entered? Even those who have not received a sufficient share of culture have shown full aptitude as workers in the various factories, and we do not exaggerate if we say that a great number of them bear the burden of providing for whole families. Is it not selfishness that woman should be required to bear man's duties, and then be denied her simplest rights as a citizen?

The swelling of the family's economic burdens, the many demands of life, and then these vast projects which every government has proclaimed in its programs and which aim at the country's good — none of these will be realized unless every individual of the nation musters his effort wholly and sets out to work. And if we take up the matter from a psychological standpoint, we observe that the morale of a woman whose rights are recognized makes her more disposed to work with devotion and sincerity for the sake of a better reality. Nor do we wish here to strip woman of her responsibility on this path, for the road she dreams of walking is a road that calls for the exercise of observation and thought, study and reading, perseverance, and the acquiring of an aware and comprehensive culture that encourages the taking of her hand. And all we hope of the governments of the Arab countries which have not decreed this right is that they hasten to proclaim it, and that they understand that woman's entry into public life is a natural result of this social and industrial development which has swept over our society or will sweep over it — so that the term of three months which the General Assembly fixed as the date for carrying out the resolution on woman's rights may not expire before these rights have been proclaimed in Egypt and in her Arab sisters.

Broadcast from the Near East Arab Broadcasting Station.