The Equality We Seek

The General Conference of the Arab Women's Union convenes in Beirut from June 7 to 13, and Arab women's circles attach great importance to its resolutions and recommendations... On the margins of this conference, the writer and thinker Rose Ghorayeb offers sound opinions that deserve attention...

I have come to be wary of speaking on any social subject, for it is among the subjects that have submitted to the invasion of science and been forced to abide by its method, which relies on statistics and figures. Every truth we try to establish becomes a matter of generalization or conjecture or probability unless it rests on precise investigations and studies sanctioned by the modern science known as sociology.

The application of this method to social and other researches has taught people to see the difference between fact and fancy, between established truth and current opinion. Here I am reminded of the famous fable of the poet La Fontaine, which shows us the cicada as an insect destroyed by recklessness and idleness, begging its food from the industrious ant. La Fontaine represented the current opinion that rests on no scientific evidence — until science came with its exact lens, refuted the poet's claim, and showed that the cicada is no less skillful than the ant at catching its food. Indeed, it added that it is the ant that sometimes sponges on the cicada to get its sustenance!

Of this kind are the studies concerning woman with which the books of sociology and psychology and their branches abound, and which have exposed the falsity of old claims about the other sex. As for the talks, speeches, and lectures we hear about woman, little of them takes on a scientific coloring. Nor do I know what share this subject receives in university studies, the institute of statistics, and the departments of social affairs. But what is beyond doubt is that scientific research on the subject of woman is neglected among us to a far-reaching degree. Perhaps the first to inaugurate its era was the "Social Affairs Committee" of the Young Women's Christian Association, when it issued a booklet entitled "The Status of Woman in Lebanon" on the occasion of the conference held in Beirut in 1949 by the women's subcommittee of the UNESCO organization.

I recall a scientific study once made by a university student — a long while ago — on the following subject: "How does society look upon woman?" The researcher confined his questioning to student circles. And I recall that most of the answers he obtained at the time reflected society's traditional view of woman and were almost devoid of any individuality.

If today we made a similar inquiry into the subject among students and others, we would surely glimpse a new tendency in their answers. Yet we assume this tendency only as an assumption, for we cannot pronounce upon it unless we support it by the method of questioning and statistics.

Such studies are apt to work a revolution in our social thinking. Among us are orators and men of letters who still sing of woman's influence over man in the old fashion, forgetting that they thereby lower her worth, since they make her an inert, passive instrument that exerts influence without feeling its own influence. They picture her as an inspiring image, a natural scene, or a momentous event that quickens the imagination of artists and stirs the zeal of heroes. And they forget that the woman who feels her power over man may exploit that power for evil as she may exploit it for good. Of the first kind was Delilah's influence in the life of Samson, and Madame de Pompadour's power at the court of Louis XV.

In times past woman relied on influence and suggestion, when the paths of independent activity were blocked before her, and she tried to reach her desires by methods that demonstrate her helplessness.

But today's woman is not merely an instrument of influence; she is a living member that interacts with her surroundings, affected by them as she affects them, and not content with an influence flowing in one direction only. Nothing shows this development in woman's position better than her turning to work in all the stages of her life, unmarried and wedded, young and advanced in years — as if she kept before her eyes the leading figures of women's activity in history, who were not content with influence and talk but plunged into the hardest labors and faced the most difficult circumstances.

I do not mean by this to belittle the importance of organized demonstrations and propaganda, nor do I forget that the banding together of Western women, their demonstrations, and their press and platform campaigns were among the chief factors of their success in obtaining the political right. But to wage the battle oneself strikes harder than striving to stir it up, and the woman who volunteers to teach the illiterate and founds model schools is better than the one who strives by words to combat ignorance and illiteracy.

I say — and I do not absolve myself — that we have lately been afflicted with a verbal inflation that gives cause for alarm.

This is what occurred to me as I leafed through an article in which mention was made of the women's conference intended to be held in Beirut next June. In it too was a reference to the subjects the conference will take up. It will be noticed that they are the traditional subjects examined at every conference of this kind: family affairs, the fight against illiteracy, compulsory education, the creation of vocational schools for girls, prison reform, juvenile reformatories, and so forth. No doubt the conference will also raise the subject of political rights, and the question of demanding them in those Arab countries which have not yet granted them to their women, or have granted them in mutilated form. Nor is it unlikely that it will touch on other subjects, such as organizing election campaigns and forming women's blocs and parties to back candidates who back women's demands, or to support women candidates for parliament in the countries that have granted women this right — as in Lebanon, for instance.

Previous women's conferences have accustomed us to their laying down comprehensive, wide-ranging resolutions, printed and published abroad, which yet remain ink on paper.

That is because they scattered their aims and multiplied their undertakings and demands, and neglected the matter of preliminary arrangements; and if they resolved on something, they omitted to indicate the means of carrying it out.

The success of a conference of this kind depends first on preparing for it several months before it convenes; second, on confining its efforts to one main subject which the members study at length, treating everything else briefly and within limits.

And it would well become the conference to concentrate its work on the subject of gravest moment in woman's life, namely her work in the home and outside the home: what are its forms, what is its extent, how does it develop and expand, what are its problems and issues, and what are the needs of the woman working in her home and outside her home.

This requires of the leaders of the women's movement that they undertake studies and researches into the conditions of woman in our country, drawing them from

their sources or entrusting them to specialists.

Woman's turning to work is without doubt the greatest manifestation of her development in our age. The question of her political rights is only an appendage to this manifestation and its natural consequence. For her work has become broad and comprehensive to a degree that enables her to command many of the vital services of her country. There are occupations and professions counted as woman's specialty and no one else's: nursing and social assistance, elementary teaching and teaching in day nurseries and kindergartens, besides teaching in girls' schools and women's colleges. This makes the function of education a preserve of woman, for she begins it in the home and accompanies the child to the nurseries and the first schools, so that the number of women teachers would be double the number of men teachers if the schools of the two sexes were equal in number.

There are occupations women almost monopolize, such as typewriting, air hostessing, broadcasting, and women's journalism. And the doors of work keep widening before them: there is the arranging of libraries, the management of hotels and restaurants, medicine for women and children, and work in laboratories, stores, and offices, in addition to public posts, industrial jobs, and domestic and agricultural labor.

Experience has lately shown us our country's need of woman's work, as it has shown us women's growing desire for work — witness the fact that many of them keep their work or seek it after marriage, and that many married women continue their university studies or learn some profession.

But the number of their schools does not meet the need, and their preparation for work suffers a grievous deficiency, especially for the teaching profession, which attracts the greatest number of them.

They stand in need of help and encouragement from governmental and non-governmental sources. They need an increase in the number of their schools; they need vocational and specialized training schools; they need an increase in their wages to equal the wages of men, and someone to watch over their rights and ensure the enforcement of the labor laws in the fields of their work. They also lack someone to carry out organized studies that expand on the description of the conditions of the woman working in her home and outside her home, and set forth her complaints and demands.

These are matters more worthy of the attention of women's organizations than juvenile reformatories and prison reform; for if the schools are reformed, and the standard of the workingman and the workingwoman is raised and her needs assured, the prisons will close and the juvenile reformatories can be dispensed with.

And perhaps we shall witness in the women's conferences, and in the organizations that feed them, a development carrying them from the stage of literary-toned essays to the stage of scientific researches, and from the business of propaganda, protest, and verbal influence to the business of serious work — which alone makes woman man's equal, and toward which our women are marching with a firm step.