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 res-olutions and recommenda-tions... 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 cir-cles. And I recall that most of the answers he obtained at the time reflected soci-ety'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 suc-