WOMEN AND PARLIAMENT

By .1. F. S. ROSS

BEFORE women had the vote we heard a good deal about "man- made laws " and " man-made wars," with the implication that when the suffrage was extended to women sweeping changes for the better would ensue. Women over thirty received• the vote in 1918 and those over twenty-one in 1928 ; so that the older women had the chance to use their votes in all seven inter-war General Elections, and even the younger ones had three General Elections in which to make their influence felt. The results do not suggest that " votes for women " has made any great difference in the course of public affairs.

True, the House of Commons still consists chiefly of men ; but the women put them there. On the present register women out- number men by roughly nine to eight, so that they have much the greater voting power. Yet at the last General Election only nine women were successful in a House numbering 615. Nor can we account for this by the smaller number of women candidates (sixty- eight), for while nearly half of the men candidates got in, less than one in seven of the women did. Do women prefer to be represented by men? It looks very much like it. These and other facts suggest also that, even now, women as a whole are less interested in politics than are men. Observation shows that though the " man in the street " is not particularly well informed on political matters the " woman in the home " is even less so. When capable women take up politics seriously they achieve a distinction that any man might envy ; names in each of the parties and outside party will leap to the mind. But the fact remains that, In general, women show less interest in and less understanding of political issues than men.

Doubtless some part of this difference is due to habit and tradition ; men got the start in such matters, and women have not yet over- taken them. Will they do so? Have they even now started to do so? Or is there some intrinsic difference between masculine and feminine mentality and temperament that makes politics more attrac- tive and intelligible to the average man than to the average woman?

These are not idle questions—they may be of great importance to our political (and therefore economic and social) future—but we

have little to go upon in attempting to answer them. We know, for each constituency and for the country as a whole, how many men electors there are and how many women ; but we have no means of telling what differences there are between the ways they vote.

Do fewer women than men use their votes? Do they distribute them between the parties differently? It has been suggested that most married women take their political views from their husbands and vote accordingly ; though cynics declare that women only say that they will vote like their husbands and actually vote the other way, because they are so sick of hearing men lay down the law on politics.

Again, it has been suggested that in using their votes women are all for " safety first," and that in the panic election of 1931, follow-

ing the so-called financial crisis, it was the women's vote that for this reason brought disaster to the Labour Party and gave the Con- servatives and their " National " allies so overwhelming a victory.

Is there any truth in this? We have no means of judging ; but we can see the danger that would hang over us if women were normally less interested than men in politics, but more liable to be swept of their electoral feet in moments of crisis.

Apart from that, however, women no less than men should culti- vate a keen and intelligent interest in the whole course of politics, The idea that women should chiefly interest themselves in such questions as housing and child-welfare is fallacious and dangerous, They have their own special and valuable contributions to make on such subjects, but it ought to be far more widely recognised than it is that all political problems fall within the woman's sphere of interest and responsibility. Industry and trade, town-planning,

unemployment, war and peace—the whole range of politics vitally affects women in the long run, no less than men, and it is up to them to act accordingly. It may be that relatively few women will ever desire to enter the House of Commons : it may be that women wilt continue to prefer to elect.men, as they presumably do now. What is essential is that women electors, whether they vote for women oc

for men, should use their votes with knowledge and discrimination. They cutnumber the men : theirs is correspondingly the heavier responsibility.

These are matters of first-class importance ; but how little actual knowledge we have to go upon in discussing them. If we could look at the record of all the elections from 1918 onwards and com- pare in detail how the women used their votes with how the men used theirs, how instructive it would be. It would not only be the main effects that we could study, but also many side issues ; for example, how the distribution of the two votes, masculine and feminine, varied in different types of constituency and as between

different types of candidate. But we do not know, and we cannot tell ; for the records are altogether silent on these points. What a pity it is.

Let us look ahead, however. How can we remedy this deficiency in the future? There is a very easy way. Let two sets of voting papers be printed for every election, identical in size and lettering and layout, but different in colour, and let the pink papers be issued to the women voters and the blue papers to the men. Then, indeed,

we shall be able to learn a great deal about the different ways of men and women as electors, and shall be able to answer some at least of the questions that now puzzle us. The additional cost would be negligible, the additional labour and time involved in counting the votes would be trifling.

If this simple reform were carried into effect it would throw a flood of light on psychological and other aspects of elections and electors, and would help us to improve both our methods and our judgements. But it would serve a wider purpose also, for it would stimulate popular interest in elections and, through them, in the problems of politics generally, while it would bring home to women both their opportunities and their responsibilities in public life. These are matters of vital importance in the stormy years that Ile ahead ; for an informed and alert electorate is essential to the proper functioning of democracy, and the proper functioning of democracy is essential to the peace and prosperity of the world.