Suffrage: Since 1898 taxpaying women have the right to vote in person or by proxy on all questions of taxation.
Office Holding: The clause in the constitution of 1879 that made women eligible to school offices was inoperative on account of some technicality, which in 1894 Mrs. Helen Behrens, a member of the Portia Club, succeeded in having removed. In 1896 Mrs. Evelyn W. Ordway, as chairman of a committee from the Era Club, presented a petition to the City Council signed by all of the editors and many other representative men of New Orleans, asking for the appointment of a woman to an existing vacancy on the school board, but this was refused. No women ever were appointed to such positions except in a few country districts.
The office of State librarian had been held by a number of women previous to 1898. The Constitutional Convention of that year, however, which gave the taxpayer's suffrage to women, swept away every vestige of their right to hold any office by adopting a clause declaring that only qualified voters should be eligible to office. Under this ruling women can not serve as notaries public.
There are no women on the boards of any public institutions in the State and none has a woman physician.
Four police matrons are employed by New Orleans, one for the parish prison, one for the police jail and two for station houses.
Occupations: No profession or occupation is legally forbidden to women.
Education: The State University at Baton Rouge is one of three in the United States which do not admit women to any department. Tulane, in New Orleans, the largest university in Louisiana, admits women to post-graduate work and to the Departments of Law and Pharmacy, but the Medical Department is still closed to them. The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for Girls is a part of Tulane University. It was endowed by Mrs. Josephine Louise Newcomb with $2,500,000 in memory of her daughter. At her death she left to it the remainder of her estate, valued at $1,500,000.
New Orleans University (white) and Leland University (colored) are co-educational. Most of the other colleges in the State are open to women.
In the public schools there are 1,991 men and 2,166 women teachers. The average monthly salary of the men is $37; of the women, $29.70.