French women want to vote

Here then, apart from a few rare cases of ballots, is the new Chamber constituted. The Work has indicated its composition from a political point of view, but we wonder what it will be from a feminist point of view. We know that we lost some friends, but we saw that some of our opponents were left behind.

To avoid hurting anyone, we would like not to name any of the defeated deputies, but we cannot, however, ignore the defeat of the former Minister of the Interior, Mr. Maurice Maunoury, representative of Eure-et - Dormouse. I remember the visit we made to his office in November 1922, at the time when the women's suffrage law, adopted by the House, was being discussed in the Senate. The minister smiled ironically when we expressed our wishes to him, and especially when we expressed the hope that the government would support the reform:

- The government, he replied, is rather hostile to your request, ladies; but, out of deference to the President of the Council who has made public commitments, the government will not oppose the discussion of the articles.
What if this discussion takes place?

I will support oh! not in my personal name the municipal electorate for women who already enjoy the right to fly; such as merchants who are voters for the commercial courts.

Very good, but the professors, the medical doctors, the lawyers. Are you forgetting the artists?

What do you want ? I can't do anything about it! And the workers?
Here Mr. Maunoury made the same evasive gesture which was immediately stopped.
Sorry, Mr. Minister, you are a lawyer; you must remember that workers, as well as their bosses, have the right to vote and to be elected to industrial tribunals.

That's right, you're right. Besides, we also thought about the victims of the war, but we cannot go any further along the path you are trying to lead us to.

Mr. Maunoury did not dare to talk to us about socks and the leap into the unknown, he preferred not to discuss. I was thinking about all this on Monday when reading the results of the vote, and I thought that, even without the female vote, there can sometimes be unpleasant surprises!

I also looked for the name of a Breton deputy who had told me, one day when I met him by chance:

Women's suffrage is very right in principle; but, as a Republican, I don't want it because the Breton women would steal for the priest and I'm not decided to go hara-kiri!

Well, it's the men who didn't re-elect him; Is he prouder for that?
Other radicals told us: Let us get rid of the National Bloc; afterwards we will talk. What are they going to do today? Will they finally understand that the best way to bring women to the Republic is to trust them and grant them the rights they demand?

We can no longer pretend that the province is disinterested in the issue. I don't believe that this time there were ten departments in France where no feminist propaganda was made during the electoral period. The groups worked hard; but feminists isolated in small communities insisted on participating in the movement. I owe thanks here to the readers of the Work who helped us morally, materially and financially.

In the provinces, now, we no longer wait for everything to come from Paris. Conferences are organized on site; and, what is better still, we decided to go to electoral meetings to distribute leaflets, even to distribute them in the streets.

La Cannebière got to know the suffragettes and gave them an excellent welcome. Our friends from Marseille wrote to me that they would have needed ten times more leaflets than they had, such was the enormous success they had. Which proves that it only takes a little courage to win over public opinion.

On all sides, voters and candidates alike were made aware that French women no longer intended to be kept away from public affairs. The high cost of living, the increase in taxes, the fear of a new war undoubtedly have a lot to do with this altitude: women have finally understood that in reality politics is everyday life.

Maria Vérone President of the French League for Women's Rights