The Effect of the Women’s Vote

From the Illustrated London News, 23rd March 1918.

LADIES' PAGE.

MR. ASQUITH has, very naturally, expressed his full assurance that a large proportion of the new women voters will ally themselves with the Liberal Party.  Very likely he is right, for the curious franchise qualification devised for women is the neatest possible arrangement for minimising any special results from their votes.  Five out of every six of the new female electorate are qualified to vote merely as the wives of male electors; while the independent, self-supporting women, by the refusal to them of a lodger and service franchise, will be mainly still kept from the polls.  Now it is only reasonable to anticipate that most wives will vote, notwithstanding the secrecy of the ballot, under their husbands' influence and direction.  As Mrs. Seddon, wife of the famous Premier of New Zealand, said to me when I asked her if the wife's vote there had tended to cause "discord in the family"—which was a favourite bugbear of past discussions—"We find," said Mrs. Seddon, "that there is very apt to be a family vote.  When a husband and father is all that he ought to be, not only his wife, but his sons and daughters too, are likely to think as he does, and all go to vote on the same side."  The wife's vote, especially when she owes her possession of the right entirely to being her husband's wife, must be, in short, much of the nature of the old "faggot votes."  This is inevitably the case.

When the Married Woman's Property Act was under discussion, a great Judge said that he believed it would make no difference, for there hardly existed wives who could not be "either kissed or kicked" out of their money!  This may, at any rate, be the case with the wife's vote.  Indeed, wives will frequently even regard the vote, coming to them solely because they are their husbands' wives, as something over which a sort of marital right of control justly exists.  Lawyers call the jewels with which a man supplies his wife "paraphernalia"—not as her own actual property, to dispose of in her lifetime and to bequeath at her death as she wills, but as still the husband's legal possession, which the lady may call her own, but which she only has and wears at his pleasure and for his honour and glory.  The vote, coming in the same way, will be morally regarded by many dutiful wives, and perforce by others under pressure from masterful husbands, as "paraphernalia."  Then, political ignorance and irresponsibility about politics have been hitherto cultivated in women; is it reasonable to expect a generation brought up under that influence to develop initiative and courageous independence?  Or is it not probable (as it is, in fact, true) that the average wife will say that her husband understands such matters more fully than she does, and that she had better simply adopt his opinions and act by his directions?  Such was, no doubt, the expectation with which the vote has been given to wives and refused to a large proportion of the self-dependent women.  We must not look for any vast immediate results, therefore, from the enfranchisement of five million married women.  Still, evolution can be very rapid, and it may prove wonderfully soon that wives will gain individual judgment and conscience in the use of their new power in the State.