490 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



ings, and they made it possible for them 

 to do so, and for poor women to go to 

 the polls on election day, by providing 

 competent and suitable women to take 

 care of their homes. Women members 

 were appointed on all the electoral 

 boards, and when the tickets were being 

 made up the women showed great mod- 

 eration, asking only that one woman's 

 name be inscribed as over against two 

 men's names on each of the party tickets. 

 As soon as the law had been passed 

 granting the suffrage to women, women's 

 interests were included in the various 

 party programs, and, as each of the al- 

 ready-organized parties was very anxious 

 to gain as many votes as possible, it 

 seemed neither advisable nor necessary 

 for the women to form a new and sepa- 

 rate party of their own. The whole 

 object of their endeavor was not to bring 

 a new party into politics, but to infuse a 

 new element into the parties already 

 existing. 



MORE WOMEN VOTERS THAN MEN VOTERS 



The very great interest that the women 

 took in the elections may be gathered 

 from the fact that in Helsingfors, the 

 capital, at the time of the second elections 

 (in 1908), there were 19,640 women 

 voters and 15,516 men voters registered.* 

 It is true that the majority of the women 

 voted for men, as there were only 26 

 women elected in a house of 200, but one 

 woman received a larger number of votes 

 than was given to any of the men candi- 

 dates of her party. 



In 1906, of the II Agrarians elected, i 

 was a woman ; of the 25 Swedes, i ; of 

 the 25 young Finns, 2 ; of the 59 Old 

 Finns, 6, and of the 80 Social Democrats, 

 9 were women, so that the proportion of 

 women to men was approximately the 

 same in all the parties except the Swed- 

 ish. 



Although the women deputies did not 

 constitute quite one-tenth of the whole 

 Diet (19 were elected in 1906), they pro- 

 posed no less than 26 bills and resolutions. 



* At the time of the first election in 1906 no 

 separate count was kept of the number of men 

 and women voters. 



a statement of which will perhaps give 

 the best idea of the special subjects in 

 which the women were interested. 



THE EAWS WHICH THE WOMEN ADVOCATE 



There were three different bills for the 

 abolition of the guardianship of the hus- 

 band over his wife, and a new woman's 

 property act; one for more rights of 

 mothers over their children; four for 

 raising the age of protection for girls ; 

 two for raising the age of legal marriage 

 for women from 15 to 17 or 18; four m 

 regard to the legal status of illegitimate 

 children ; two petitions for more exten- 

 sive employment of women in state serv- 

 ice; for a state subsidy in behalf of 

 schools for domestic training; for an 

 annual subsidy of 20,000 marks for tem- 

 perance ; for obliging municipalities to 

 appoint a midwife in each parish ; for an 

 amendment of the paragraph of the 

 Agrarian law which stipulates that sale 

 of an estate annihilates all lease con- 

 tracts ; for encouragement and extension 

 of co-education ; for abolition of the law 

 on domestic service ; for the construction 

 of a specified railway ; for the establish- 

 ment of a maternity insurance fund ; for 

 the appointment of women as sanitary 

 inspectors ; for amendment of the law on 

 litigation in so far as women shall be 

 granted the same rights as men in regard 

 to legal assistance ; for subventions to the 

 distribution of free meals to school chil- 

 dren ; for pardoning the Finns that took 

 part in the Sveaborg revolt ; for the 

 abolition of disciplinary punishments in 

 prisons ; for making it a penal offense to 

 insult a woman on the public roads or in 

 any other public place.* 



Up to the time of the dissolution of 

 the first Diet (March, 1908) only three 

 of the women's bills had been debated 

 and decided upon- — the institution of mid- 

 wives, domestic training, and the raising 

 of the age of marriage from 15 to i/- 

 Various other bills would probablv have 

 been passed by the Parliament if the 

 sudden dissolution of the Diet had not 

 put a stop to all parliamentary work. 



* Report for the "International Woman's Suf- 

 frasre Alliance." 



