Note:According to Idola Saint-Jean, why should women have the right to vote?
Extract:
“The selfishness that created the state of things that we are fighting, the subordinate status of women, a state resulting from primitive times when only brute force prevailed over the law, will all be gradually suppressed and the last remnants of the aristocracy will disappear. Mankind after almost universally admitted the absurdity of and removing the privileges, the ranks, castes related to birth will abolish the last surviving aristocracy, the aristocracy of the sexes. All-powerful logic, which nothing can stop, will make its way in spite of all obstacles because logic is simple, because the law determining the crowds… The last conflict, a conflict in which women, thank God, had no responsibility in leading men in killing, forced women to return to their role in society. Women fulfilled and completed all their tasks. As a result, women have become aware of their capabilities, and having once been put at the service of humanity, they no longer want to return to their pre-war life incomplete. Having realized that while performing their duties as wife and mother, they could very well devote a part of their activity to the well-being of humanity, they will fight bravely until all the world has recognized that female influence is just as necessary in public life as in the family.
Women in the province of Quebec are the only women in North America who are denied the right to citizenship today. They are subject to all laws, pay all taxes, is it not unjust to deprive them of a privilege that all Canadian citizens born in this country and elsewhere have?
We vote in federal elections as intelligently as women from neighbouring provinces. So why can we not deal with problems discussed in our provincial parliament? ”
Source of extract: Free translation of Idola Saint-Jean, Le Monde Ouvrierpersonne qui travaille avec ses mains (souvent dans une usine), 28 janvier 1928. Cité dans Yvan Lamonde et Claude Corbo, Le rouge et le bleu : Une anthologie de la pensée politique au Quebec de la ConquêteConquest is when a country, people or individual conquers another. Conquers means to defeat and take... à la Révolution tranquille, Montréal, PUM, 1999,
p. 375-376.
