that on the education authorities created by the Act shall sit co-opted women members. Since these women owe their position, not to the support of the electors, but to the good pleasure of their colleagues, their authority is necessarily weakened. In Urban Districts having a population of more than 20,000 women can be elected to the local education authority.
Before leaving the subject of local government, it should be noticed that a special disability was introduced into the Local Government Act of 1894. A chairman of a District Council shall, so the Act provides, be by virtue of his office a Justice of the Peace—unless such chairman be a woman.
The State Church is officered by men, and other denominations have in this matter taken the same course. The Unitarians alone have, in a single instance only, broken this rule of exclusion.
Into the Civil Service women are not admitted, except as regards the lower ranks. There exists, too, a handful of women inspectors of factories, of schools, and of children "boarded out" under the Poor Law.
It will be seen that the disabilities which affect women as citizens, as members of the community, are by no means altogether due to legal enactment. Custom, almost as rigid and difficult of removal as law, forms a wall confining within narrow limits the sphere of such persons as do not happen to belong to the male sex.
We come now to the consideration of sex disability in regard to rights of property.
