Keeping Up with Kuwait

Women's suffrage? Not a soul in the postage-stamp principality of Liechtenstein (pop. 22,000) would dare admit to being against it. All three newspapers supported it. Every automobile in sight had a sticker reading I'M FOR IT. Dozens of reporters searched for days without finding a single man who would speak out in opposition. Yet last week, when Liechtenstein's conservative, German-speaking male voters went to the polls, only 1,817 said ja, while 1,897 voted nein.

Occupying only 62 square miles in the mountains between Austria and Switzerland, Liechtenstein has few but varied claims to fame. It is ruled by a prince from one of Europe's oldest royal families and is the world's second largest producer of false teeth (after the U.S.). It has no currency of its own, nor does it have soldiers, unemployment, slums or airports. Last week's vote left Liechtenstein another distinction: it is the only European country without female suffrage, leaving it in the same category as Jordan, Kuwait, Northern Nigeria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia (where men cannot vote either). Some Liechtensteiners saw the outcome less as a rejection of women than as a gesture of independence from Switzerland, which granted suffrage to women by a 2-to-l majority only last month.

For the most part, the still disenfranchised ladies accepted their fate stolidly. But some miniskirted militants demonstrated in Vaduz and smaller towns, booing male pedestrians and carrying placards inscribed: MEN OF LIECHTENSTEIN, WHERE'S YOUR VIRILITY?

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