The Hastings Standard Published Daily. FRIDAY, SEPT. 11, 1896. THE POLITICAL WOMAN.

Hastings Standard, Issue 118, 11 September 1896, Page 2

The Hastings Standard Published Daily.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 11, 1896. THE POLITICAL WOMAN.

For • cause that lacks assistance. I '.lie wrongs that need resistance, I"-.- '; future in the distance, :l:o Rood that we can do.

The Wanganui Women's Political League has adopted a series of seven questions to submit to candidates at the approaching election, and we may reasonably infer from this that the political woman is conscious of the power she now wields as an enfranchised entity. The questions of the Wanganui women are in the main aimed at securing for women equal rights and privileges as those now possessed by men. The women desire to see all the professions opened to them, to secure equal pay for equal work, and to be privileged to sit in the Councils of the State to the same extent as men. The demand of the women for an extension of their liberties is the natural outcome of the limited freedom conferred on them by the electoral laws of the colony. The woman movement has in recent years made considerable progress. The rubbish and debris of tradition and privilege have been undermined and swept away year by year. Legislation in favor of women has advanced rapidly, and nowhere more so than in New Zealand. In seeking to widen their privileges and to extend their liberties, the women are following up the natural sequence of the victories they have already won. What will be the outcome of the free opening-up to them of the various professions and State appointments ? Few can realise this even approximately. Woman herself pleads that " Woman is a conscious and moral being, an intelligent human being, endowed with reason ; she has a right to the free development and to the free exercise of her facilities ; she has a right to justice and to independence; she has a right to wofk wh'ch ie a natural right, and which ncl 1 br right to the choice* of p n suited to her «aj>abiluU;s; * i wpo..

sible to refuse to women free access to any career." No doubt it will be impossible to refuse women these rights, but it is just as well not to hurry matters. According to some of the best thinkers of the day, the attainment by women of economic independence and free access to all the professions on the same footing as men will ultimately involve a revolution in all our social institutions. The sexuological problem must be satisfactorily solved first. One writer on the subject says, " Will this movement carried out to its logical conclusion produce, as it were, two castes of women—the child-bearing and non-child-bearing woman. Perfect freedom is hardly possible without economic independence, but under the existing conditions of society economic independence for the child-bearing woman is almost out of the question, and we are forced to consider whether the very fact of child-bearing inevitably produces the subjection of women." The position of women, and of men, too, is inseparably bound up with the relationships between the sexes known as marriage, and the prosperity of a country depends on the proper maintenance of the relations between husband and wife ; and if these domestic relations are unhealthy,—if the wife has not her place in the social polity,—that country is rotten to the core, and its complete decay is inevitable. Too great an emancipation of woman may lead to that corruption which will end in national decay. To throw open the professions to women, to admit them on an equal footing with men in the fields of labor, will inevitably cause a revolution in our social institutions. The relations of the sexes will be disturbed, and that disturbance may, probably will, be against the national welfare. It will be right to permit woman " the choice of a profession suited to her capabilities " if the privilege does not undermine the stability of the nation. The rights of the nation must take precedence of individual or class privileges, and as there is every good reason to suppose that under our present condition the perfect equality of the sexes will endanger the nation, it is scarcely to be regretted that the emancipation of woman proceeds slowly.