Page:Women Wanted.djvu/398

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WOMEN WANTED

WOMAN'S COMING OF AGE

That's the way that men have made the world. Now see it beginning to be made over. Women everywhere are crying out in their conventions and associations that the married woman's own nationality should be restored to her. America is the first country to take action about it. And here, because women have arrived at the halls of government, it is more than resolution and petition. The United States Congress has before it a bill proposing the repeal of the law compelling women to relinquish their American citizenship on marriage to foreigners. The bill was introduced, let us note, by the Hon. Jeanette Rankin, the first woman to be a member of the national law-making body.

What was it man said a little while ago: "You do not need a vote, my dear. I will represent you in government and make the laws for you." So all over the world he did. But isn't it plain now that he made a mess of some of the laws he made for her? It is a conviction that has crystallised simultaneously in all countries that woman in her present independent sphere of activity has won her right to self-determination in all matters personally important to her. That is why measures for her enfranchisement are so universally under way. Let her vote for herself. Let her represent herself. No one else has been able successfully to do this for her. And it may be that now she will be able to make better