Did the Lebanese Woman Succeed in Waging the Electoral Battle, or Did She Fail?

The sun of July 12 rose upon woman after fatigue had worn out her strength from the many meetings she had attended, and her voice had grown hoarse from all her speechmaking and chanting; yet she pressed on to finish what she had to do.

It was a trial for the Arab woman in general, but a trial it fell to the Lebanese woman's lot to pass through before all her sisters in the Arab lands.

And so the Arab woman stood watching her as she waged the battle. As for the men, they trained their field glasses upon her to see what this woman would do — this woman who had rebelled against the established order and stood firm in her position for years, her resolve unshaken by parliamentary opposition, press campaigns, or biting, mocking jokes... They stood training their glasses on her to see: would she nominate herself... how would she exercise her right for the first time... what was the measure of her maturity and her awareness...

As for the newspapers, they turned their lights upon her, sharpened their pens, and stood watching, ready to dissect her — indeed to mock her if need be... But not many days passed before the men set their glasses aside and ran after woman, seeking her support... inviting her to their meetings, listening to her speeches, and applauding the force of her argument. The papers, for their part, extolled her activity and her organization.

Woman had two rights within the one right: to nominate herself for a deputy's seat, and to elect her candidate. After all that enthusiasm, people believed she would put herself forward by the dozens... because long deprivation had whetted her appetite... and because the seat is tempting. But she did not — or she did, but on a very limited scale. Why?... Was it that, seeing the battle so hot — four candidates and more for a single seat — she felt certain of failure and did not wish to open her era with failure?... Was it that she stood in awe of the situation and preferred to bide her time for a coming occasion?... Was it that, standing at the edge of the battle for the first time, she discovered what prodigious efforts, what cunning, what twisting and turning and all the rest a candidate requires — things in which she had not yet been drilled — and so preferred to watch the course of the battle, taking her lessons this time and leaving the examination for the time to come?...

It may be all these factors, or some of them, that made her hold back — though it would have been better, in my view, for her to step forward; for stepping forward is courage, whether one wins or is beaten, and defeat is no disgrace to the brave.

As for woman's second right, she exercised it in a manner that wrested the admiration of the press, which came out proclaiming in banner headlines: that woman had proved beyond argument that she was mistress of the situation; that she went to the polls with an eagerness that gave her the deciding word; that our democratic life gained much by giving woman her rights; that woman's enthusiasm surpassed all measure — even the elderly women were no less enthusiastic than the young; that in the electoral battle she waged, plunging into it up to her ears, she proved herself worthy of bearing political burdens and of standing before man as equal facing equal... that the gentlemen were no more than what the supernumeraries are to the hero of the play... that the women's polling stations were distinguished by their order; that even in the villages women went to the polls at a rate of sixty percent, chanting and ululating and dressed in their holiday clothes... and that it appeared from the answers of many old women who had reached seventy that they understood what they were doing, and that they wanted a share in deciding the country's destiny before they died and the chance escaped them...

It remains for us to ask: was woman, in casting her vote, free and aware in her thinking — adding to the men's opinions a free opinion of her own, and raising to the seat the man she believed, in good faith, to be the country's loyal servant — or was she swayed by the opinion of her man, be he husband, father, brother, or son?...

The truth is that no sweeping judgment can rightly be passed on all women. The women who voted were of several kinds, according to their culture and emancipation, or their lack of culture and emancipation. There is a large class of women voters possessed of full awareness, of sifted opinion, and of a judgment of men measured by what those men have done for the homeland... and on the basis of that awareness, that opinion, and that judgment they voted... There is a class under man's influence, whose opinion is his opinion and whose thinking is his thinking... And there is a class that was led along and worked upon. That is the plain truth, which must not be denied. But let us ask: was not man, in his stance toward the elections, exactly like woman — one group aware, mature, of settled opinion and true judgment; one group led by private interest, family or otherwise; and one group that is led and influenced?... In any case, woman's intense turnout at the polls — the mere turnout, rather than sitting at home in dread of the situation and avoidance of responsibility — this turnout alone carries the meaning of activity, which is among the harbingers and proofs of success...

But since woman did not nominate herself, and voted and gave her voice — did she bargain with her candidate? In America, for example, women number millions, yet only a few of them occupy seats; the overwhelming majority organize their rights with astonishing precision, then back their candidate and raise him to the seat after agreement and understanding. Thus they attain their aims through him, and he carries out what he pledged to them. Did the Lebanese woman — the aware class of her — do the like?... Did she elect the candidate faithful to the country's interest and stipulate that he be at the same time faithful also to her own particular interest?...

The Swiss woman — who has never entered parliament at all — was once asked why she does not demand her right to a deputy's seat... She answered: I possess all my social rights; man has done me justice and held my rights sacred; why then should I not leave the deputyship to him and busy myself with other things?... The Lebanese woman, however — indeed the Arab woman generally — used to complain of man's injustice and the injustice of the laws he had enacted. She saw her social right utterly trampled: she inherits from her father only half of what her brother inherits, and from her husband only a quarter if she has no children, and an eighth if she has, while the rest of the fortune goes to the relatives. She may be a physician, or a professor at a university with her distinguished standing and her independent income, and yet she cannot travel from one country to another unless her husband signs her passport — and other iniquities besides.

Hence her insistence on winning her political right: first, that her dignity might be safeguarded; and second — and this is the more important — that she might demand under the dome of parliament her trampled social rights, so that the laws be reformed and the injustice lifted from her. Did she seize the opportunity that offered itself, and stipulate to the candidate she was to raise to the deputy's seat that he stand in her stead and reform the laws that trample her right?... I think she did not. Her organization was not a woman's organization — that is, one built on the basis of woman's interest — and not one banner was to be seen bearing the words: 'Elect the champion of woman, who will do for her thus and so.' If my surmise is correct, woman has missed a great opportunity to realize her aspirations, and it now falls to her to wait several more years, during which she will organize her affairs further, so as to wage the battle on the basis of her own interest... In any case, woman may have her mistakes — but they are the mistakes that usually accompany the first step.

On the whole: if we picture the great leap woman has leaped — if we picture the grandmother who was ordered and who obeyed, tucking herself away in the house like a piece of its furniture, in inertness I will not say as ornament and beauty, vanishing indoors whenever a strange man entered, preparing the coffee and sending it out to the guests... if we set against her the woman of July 1953, standing on the roof of a motorcar, making speeches and chanting and crying, 'We are your men, O So-and-so!' — a cry with a jest in it that seems laughable on the surface, but that holds in its depths the rush of a bomb bursting after long suppression, its owner wishing to say: we are like the men in strength and might. If we set this granddaughter — shoulder to shoulder with her candidate, her hand in his — against that grandmother who understood nothing of the world and who hid indoors whenever the shadow of a strange man appeared, murmuring 'A man is coming!' — then we are assured that woman is advancing with rapid strides, and that on the near morrow she will not be content with a deputy's seat but will aspire to a throne, like her grandmothers among the Arab women — Zenobia and Bilqis, or Cleopatra and Nitocris and others. And history always repeats itself.