Women exercise the right of municipal suffrage only in those localities whose male population is absent at work during a large part of the year (as in Russia). Women can be elected as members of school boards and as poor-law administrators in the Canton Zurich; as members of school boards in the Canton Neuchâtel. The question of granting women the right to vote in church affairs has long been advocated in the Canton Geneva by the Reverend Thomas Müller, a member of the Consistory of the National Protestant Church, and by Herr Locher, Chief of the Department of Public Instruction of the Canton Zurich. In the Canton Geneva, where there is separation of church and state, agitation in favor of the reform is being carried on. The women in the Canton Vaud have exercised the right to vote in the _Église libre_ since 1899, and in the _Église nationale_ since 1908. Since 1909, women have exercised the right to vote in the _Église évangélique libre_ of Geneva. The woman's suffrage movement was really started by the renowned Professor Hilty, of Berne, who declared himself (in the Swiss Year Book of 1897) in _favor_ of woman's suffrage. The first society concerning itself exclusively with woman's suffrage originated in Geneva (_Association pour le suffrage feminin_). Later other organizations were formed in Lausanne, Chaux de Fonds, Neuenburg, and Olten. The Woman's Reading Circle of Berne had, since 1906, demanded political rights for women, and the Zurich Society for the Reform of Education for Girls had worked in favor of woman's suffrage. On May 12, 1908, these seven societies organized themselves into the National Woman's Suffrage League, and in June affiliated with the International Woman's Suffrage Alliance. The Report of the International Woman's Suffrage Congress, Amsterdam, 1908, explains in a very lucid manner the political backwardness of the Swiss women: Switzerland regards itself as the model democracy; time has been required to make it clear that politically the women of this model state still have everything to achieve. The meeting of the Committee of the International Council of Women in Geneva (September, 1908) accomplished much for the movement. The Swiss Woman's Public Utility Association, which had refused to join the Swiss Federation of Women's Clubs because the Federation concerned itself with political affairs (the Public Utility Association wishing to restrict itself to public utilities only), was given this instructive answer by Professor Hilty: "Public utility and politics are not mutually exclusive; an educated woman that wishes to make a living without troubling herself about politics is incomprehensible to me. The women ought to take Carlyle's words to heart: 'We are not here to submit to everything, but also to oppose, carefully to watch, and to win.'" GERMANY Total population: 61,720,529. Women: 31,259,429. Men: 30,461,100. German Federation of Women's Clubs. Woman's Suffrage League.