A Plea for Extension of
Women’s Influence (part 3)
. . . Another argument brought forward against giving votes to women
is "If women were to vote they would want to run for Parliament." Why
would they? Our Canadian widows and spinsters from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, have for years been voting for mayors and aldermen. The idea
that women, having the right to vote, would destroy the home has
proved incorrect. It has not been found to work that way in our towns
and cities. Women have been admitted to municipal franchise without
any disturbance of the home, deterioration of her character, or
interference with her higher functions. There has not been the
slightest change in our social and domestic sphere by so great an
innovation as our mothers and sisters casting their votes at a
municipal election. Can any reasonable man explain why he fears
disaster falling on his home and society if his mother should cast a
vote for a parliamentary candidate as well as for a municipal officer?
But one says it is not the time in casting the vote, it is the time
qualifying to cast it, getting the information on public questions
necessary to cast an intelligent vote. The great educator of the mass
of voters today is the newspaper; women, good wives and mothers, spend
as much time reading the newspapers as men do. The only difference the
right to vote might make is, that perhaps they would read the
editorials and articles rather than the advertisements and social
items-might take more interest in the passing of a bill and less in
the details of smart gowns worn at fashionable "At Homes."
WCTU Convention Edmonton Journal 12 Oct. 1907: 9.
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