ANTI-WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9167, 15 August 1908, Page 4

ANTI-WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE.

The National Women's Anti-Suffrage Association in England has issued a very striking circular, setting furth the reasons which have prompted the signatories to organise a counter campaign against the "Vote 3 for Women" movement. They hold it to be of fundamental importance that the spirit of sex antagonism aroused by the women's suffrage propaganda should be combated by recognition of the fact that the respective spheres of men and women are neither antagonistic nor identical, but complementary. While supporting the concession of the municipal vote, they hold that to confer the Parliamentary franchise on women of property would inspire such discontent in the unenfranchised women that a wholesale enfranchisement of women would inevitably follow, with the result that (under adult suffrage) the voting' women would outnumber the voting men by a majority greater than often decides the relative position of parties after a General election. They further point out that political equalisation of the sexei would involve the qualification of women for Parliament and various offices under the Crown—a result inconsistent with the physical conditions of female life, and calculated to impair woman's influence in the home sphere.