How often have we heard them extol the extent of the social justice that has reached, and is reaching, the Arab woman, citing anecdotes and curiosities to prove that woman is now amply favored compared with her state in the days of the Jahiliyya, and that man is distinguished from her only by simple differences of no essential importance. What escapes these people is that it is precisely these differences that have made woman, down the ages, a weak human being, broken in morale, limited in possibilities, deep in doubt of herself and of those around her, so that she became, in the nature of things, beneath man, ruled by the feeling of an inferiority complex.

And could she be anything else, when her testimony counts as defi-cient merely because she is female — when her share of her father's inheritance is half her brother's share, and man is guardian over her, divorcing her when he pleases and keeping her when he pleases — and all the rest of that taming of her pride and drugging of her self-respect?

The Arab woman's cause today aims at absolute equality — equality politically, then civilly and socially; without this equality the two scales of the Arab home and Arab society will never balance, nor will they rise from their present stumble.

There is no fear for the Arab woman as she sets about entering this road — the road of absolute equality — though it be rugged and thorny and full of obstacles; though the second step be of greater moment than the first; and though woman, as she walks it, must collide with stubborn opposing elements and with laws of firmly founded structure, very difficult to confront or attempt to touch — unless there be granted to our nation social reformers imbued with the spirit of this age, whose understanding is wide enough for so grave an upheaval, and who have courage enough to come forward and bear the supreme responsibility.

And it is my certainty that unless this upheaval takes place in the very core of our life, it is idle

to suppose that the Arab woman will one day see her distant hopes fulfilled and become a 'peer,' the equal of her brother man, in all the breadth and depth of that word.

The arrow has left the quiver; we have covered a first stage of the

road — the starting point for the daughters of our sex — and from it we begin the struggle in the battle that is surely coming, and whose first signs, as I see it, are not far off.