one a workingman, two are farmers, etc. Of the
unmarried women representatives six are teachers, two are tailors, two are
editors of women's newspapers, four are traveling lecturers, one is a
factory inspector, and there is one Doctor of Philosophy.

In both parliaments the women presented numerous measures, some of general
concern, others bearing on woman's rights.[63] Some of the measures
provided for: the improvement of the legal status of illicit children,
parental authority, the protection of maternity, the abolition of the
husband's guardianship over the wife, the better protection of children,
the protection of the woman on the street, the abolition of the regulation
of prostitution, and the raising of the age of consent.

This list of measures indicates that the Finnish laws regulating marriage
are still antiquated, and that the political emancipation of woman did not
immediately effect her release from legal bondage. One of the Finnish
woman's advocates said, "Our short experience has taught us that we may
still have a hard fight for equal rights."

Not only the antiquated marriage laws are inconsistent with the national
political rights of women; in the municipal election laws, too, woman is
treated unjustly. Married women do not exercise the right of suffrage, and
widows and unmarried women possess the passive suffrage only in the
election of poor-law administrators and school boards. Two woman's
suffrage organizations--_Unionen_ and _Finsk Kvinnoforening_--have
existed since 1906; they have no party affiliations. Two new woman's
suffrage societies--_Swenska Kinnoforbundet_ and _Naitluetto_
(Young-Finnish)--are party organizations.

The bill concerning the abolition of the official regulation of
prostitution has meanwhile become law, replacing the former
unsatisfactory, and for Finland, exceptional law. The law corresponding to
the English Vagrancy Act (supplement to paragraph 45 of the Finnish Civil
Code) provides that "whoever accosts a woman in public places for immoral
purposes shall pay a fine of $50."

On October 31, 1907, the manufacture, importation, sale, or storing of
alcoholic liquors in any form whatever was prohibited by law. In recent
years the Finnish woman temperance lecturer, Trigg Helenius, has carried
on a successful international propaganda.

External and internal difficulties have to the present made impossible the
formation of Finnish women's clubs and a federation of the women vot