Women in parliament

The event does not make the noise it deserves. And yet it is symbolic and significant. The women decided not to wait another day to enter Parliament. Since the question of their political rights is still pending, they will do without the aid of a still hypothetical electoral law and claim to invade Luxembourg and the Palais-Bourbon today... as stenographers.

The most brilliant notepad and pencil virtuosos, equipped with all the necessary diplomas, have decided to present themselves en masse to the shorthand competitions of the House and Senate, to supplant their male colleagues.

But an Under-Secretary of State tries to dissuade them from this ambition. "Young girls at the desks in the Chamber," he cried, "do you think of that ?" It would be too great a distraction for our honorables ! And the applicants to protest energetically against what they call "an unpleasant parliamentary donjuanisme".

Aren't they right ? I see, for my part, only advantages in this innovation, which would allow the eternal feminine to note on the fly the debates of the eternal masculine. Would it not be a precious guarantee of decency and good behavior when the sessions became stormy ? Many parliamentarians, too combative, would watch their language. At the Palais-Bourbon a courteous atmosphere would gradually reign. It would no longer be a bedroom, it would be a living room. The interpellators would no longer dare to make such frequent use of the Homeric insult. And when a speaker, unable to make himself heard in the din of the raging desks, is forced to lean towards the stenographers to dictate his speech for the Official Journal, do you not guess that, he finds in front of him, to collect his irritated confidences, the rosy ear of a blonde and charming stenographer, his eloquence will immediately become parliamentary?

EMILE