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ePaper created 2014-11-09, 13:16:45 | version 1.33.00
Reproduced by Australian Atatürk Cultural Centre Inc. 12 nationwide scientific and artistic events, you may rest assured that even the most fanatical people will look up at them.20 If a society does not march towards its goal with all its women and men together, it is scientifically impossible for it to progress and to become civilised.21 It should be realised that everything we see on earth is the product of women (...). If a society tries to attain a level of contemporary civilisation with just one of the sexes, then it will be enfeebled by more than one half (...). Motherhood is the most important duty of women. The significance of this duty will be appreciated if it is recalled that a mother's bosom is where a human being first receives his training.22 Has not the Turkish woman demonstrated her talents, her capabilities and her concern for and preoccupation with the affairs of the country on many occasions, notably during our War of Liberation? To sum up, women must acquire suffrage as well as the right to be elected.23 *∗ Democracy manifests itself most clearly in the form of a Republic.24 Entering the Grand National Assembly * Women were given the right to vote and to offer themselves as candidates in municipal elections in April 1930. In the March 1935 elections, 18 women were elected to Parliament. One of them was a peasant woman by the name of Sati who had been the ’’headman" of her village. (AFET İNAN: Atatürk Hakkında Hatıralar ve Belgeler, Second edition, 1968, Ankara, pp. 256, 257, 261, 262)