The Woman's Word: Why Did Laure Tabet Fail in the Elections? Is It Woman's Awareness or Her Lack of It?

A friend of mine, who served during the recent parliamentary elections as head of one of the women's polling stations in Beirut, commented on them, saying:

"There is no doubt that the Lebanese woman demonstrated 'awareness' in forsaking the woman candidate — the president of the League of Women's Organizations in Lebanon — because, with her keen instinct, she realized that the battle was a decisive one, that upon its results the face of Lebanon would be drawn and its destiny determined, and that this grave role is the man's role, not the woman's!"

I, of course, did not agree with my friend in this opinion, and I took a contrary view of the election results. The failure of the one woman who stood fast in the battle to the very end, neither bending nor retreating — I considered it, and I say it with sorrow, proof of the "lack of awareness" of our women; for I believe in my heart of hearts that the time has come to give woman a share in the parliamentary activities and concerns that fix the destinies and the directions of life for the future of this dear country.

Were it mine to analyze the factors and causes that led to the failure of Laure Tabet, I would not lay all the blame upon the woman voter, stripping her of all awareness, sincerity, and sense of responsibility... And yet I grant that she bears the first responsibility for this failure; for she displayed, in championing and supporting Mrs. Tabet — before my own eyes and within my own hearing — an enthusiasm beyond compare. If the pledges and promises the woman voter made were crooked and false ones, then wretched indeed is this shameful beginning of her political life.

Or if the fault lay in the means of publicity the candidate employed — they were either crude and deficient, or pitched at a very lofty and impractical level, and so their results came out, in consequence, unexpected and ineffective.

Or perhaps this result is fresh proof that woman is not yet that practiced expert in the affairs of politics and its arts, with the maneuvers and stratagems they demand, into which a lady of refined breeding refuses to plunge herself? And thus Mrs. Tabet did not know how to manage her voters, to impose her influence, and to win the confidence of the various classes of her own sex?

I have not searched out the truth, and therefore I do not know whether the fault lies in one of these causes or in the joining of them all. What I do know for certain is that had the women wished to keep their pledges, they would have carried the president of the League of Women's Organizations into Parliament — inevitably, and without any great effort — despite the strength and number of the opposing forces. Nor would all these factors together have turned them from their resolve... But in the depths of their consciences, and at the decisive moment, they preferred "the man" to "the woman" — a painful truth which I am ashamed to set down here...

The renaissances of nations are marked by points of departure that propel peoples toward a new dawn ruled by prosperity. Among the virtues of this era of ours is that it has given woman her full political rights. Today in Lebanon we look toward the threshold of a sweeping renaissance. It would have been a glorious thing for woman's brow to shine forth in it, as a just recognition of her long, silent struggle — whether in the fields of social service, of culture, or of humanity — and also for the distinguished competence she has won, over the past half century, in every field.

And it would have been a glorious thing, too, had this word come not from us, but awakened, lived, and borne fruit in the consciences of those responsible and those in power, as proof once again of their disinterestedness and their sincerity, and hence of their worthiness to hold the helm of government...

When, one wonders, will Lebanon — government and people — come to understand that woman's presence among the members of its parliament is a spiritual guarantee, a setting of right in its proper place, and a living proof of advancement and progress??