THE VOCATIONAL APTITUDES OF WOMEN
By
LETA STETTER HOLLINGWORTH, PH. D.
_Bellevue Hospital, New York City_
It is customary for authors, in discussing vocational problems, to assume
that the vocational future of girls is determined in advance by the fact of
sex. Not infrequently the lack of provision for domestic training in our
high schools and colleges is indicated at length, and suggestions for
establishing the domestic arts and sciences on a firmer basis in the
educational system are advanced. Some paragraphs may be devoted to a
discussion of the statistics which show that thousands of girls go from
school into industry, and to an inquiry as to what training is best fitted
to assist them in earning a living for the period intervening between
graduation and matrimony. With this the discussion of vocational problems
ends, so far as girls are concerned, and the remaining space is given over
to more adequate consideration of the vocational aptitudes and guidance of
boys.
It is the purpose of this chapter to inquire whether there are any innate
and essential sex differences in tastes and abilities, which would afford a
scientific basis for the apparently arbitrary and traditional assumption
that the vocational future of all girls must naturally fall in the domestic
sphere, and consequently presents no problem, while the future of boys is
entirely problematical, and may lie in any one of a score of different
callings, according to personal fitness. We shall try to determine whether
the present expectation that all women will follow the same vocation, i.
e., housekeeping, is founded on any fact or facts of human intellect, or
whether it arises merely from ideas of traditional expediency connected
with the care of the young, and whether it leads to a waste of energy and
of intellectual talents.
The discussion will take the form of five general questions, together with
the answers which are to be made to each in the light of experimental
psychology: (1) Are there innate sex differences in average intelligence?
(2) Is either sex more variable than the other in mental traits? (3) Are
there any special causes of intellectual inefficiency affecting one sex
but not the other? (4) Are there any sex differences in affective or
instinctive equipment which would naturally lead to vocational
differentiation of the sexes? (5) What explanation is to be given of the
traditional division of labor between the sexes?
It will be necessary at the outset to draw a clear distinction between the
_literature of opinion_ and the _literature of fact_. The literature of
opinion includes all written statements, made by scientific men and others,
not based on experimental evidence. The literature of opinion on the
subject of sex differences in mental traits is voluminous. It appears in
the writings of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Mill, Moebius, and others. By the
literature of fact is meant those written statements based on experimental
data, which have been obtained under carefully controlled conditions, and
which may be verified by anyone competent to understand and criticize them.
In this chapter we shall seek the answers to the propounded questions in
the literature of fact alone, neglecting as irrelevant to the discussion
the entire literature of opinion.
Since the discussion is limited to the literature of fact, it will of
necessity refer only to literature of a comparatively recent date. Until
about fifteen years ago there had been practically no attempt to collect
precise data on the subject of sex differences in mental abilities. Before
experimental data were sought the hypothesis was accepted that human
females are, by original nature, different from and inferior to human
males, intellectually. The factor of sex determined everything; the way to
discover whether a given individual was capable of any given intellectual
task was not to let the individual undertake the task and to judge by the
result, but to indicate the sex of the person in question.
Coincident with the intense controversy which rose in the nineteenth
century over the higher education of women, a number of statistical studies
were carried on by the questionnaire method. These were followed by
experimental studies, and at the opening of the twentieth century several
experiments were being made to investigate the matter of sex differences in
intellect. About this time also the idea began to gain headway that
whatever differences exist between the sexes as we find them in the world
may be due to training and not to original nature; and it began to be
pointed out that this aspect of the matter complicates even experimental
investigation in ways difficult to control.
We may speak here of the experiments on brain weight which were published
and much discussed about thirty years ago. Romanes, among others, insisted
that the male brain was, on the average, several grams heavier than the
female brain, and for a time it was supposed that the fact of innate female
inferiority had been thus satisfactorily established. However, it was later
demonstrated that relative to total body weight the female brain is as
heavy as the male brain. It was also found that no positive correlation can
be established between brain weight and intellect.
In 1906 Helen Bradford Thompson published her dissertation, from Chicago
University, entitled "The Mental Traits of Sex." This volume gives a
summary of the scattered bits of experimental work done previous to that
time, and presents her numerous experiments on a group of men and a group
of women at Chicago University. The result of her tests in various mental
traits is that the differences between the sexes were in no case as great
as the individual differences within either sex. Men differed from each
other in these experiments (as did women also, among themselves), as much
as men differed from women. In only two of the many traits tested was a
reliable difference found between the central tendencies of the sexes. In
speed of voluntary movement (tapping) men were quicker than women, and in
memory women were superior to men. On the whole, however, the result
indicated equality of mental ability between the sexes.[15] It will be
enough for the present purposes to say that after about twenty years of
collecting data by scientific experiment, the hypothesis that there is any
innate sex difference in average intellectual ability has been abandoned by
all psychologists who base their statements on scientific evidence. For
example, Dr. E. L. Thorndike, in the most recent edition of "Educational
Psychology" (1914), writes as follows, in summing up the experimental work
on sex differences in average intellectual ability:
"The most important characteristic of these differences is their small
amount. The individual differences within either sex so enormously outweigh
any difference between the sexes that for all practical purposes any such
difference may be disregarded.... As is well known the experiments of the
past generation in educating women have shown their equal competence in
school work of elementary, secondary and collegiate grade.... The
psychologist's measurements lead to the conclusion that this equality of
achievement comes from an equality of natural gifts, not from an
overstraining of the lesser talents of women."
Thus our first question, Are there innate sex differences in average
intelligence, which would call for differentiation of vocations on the
ground of sex? may be thus answered: So far as the literature of fact tells
us, we know of no considerable sex differences in average mental ability.
The evidence of experimental science (and on this point there is now a
large amount of evidence available) shows that by the test of averages the
sexes have equal ability to perform mental tasks.
Our second question, Is there a sex difference in variability in mental
traits which would call for a differentiation of vocation on the ground of
sex? has not been so long, nor so thoroughly investigated by
experimentalists as has the first question. What we are trying to discover
here is whether, when tested in any given mental trait, a group of boys
will differ more from one another than will a group of girls (similarly
selected and equal in number) differ from one another. In other words, are
the members of one sex very much alike in tastes, interests and abilities,
while the members of the other sex differ over a wide range of tastes,
interests and abilities? Obviously this might be the case, though the two
groups yielded an average exactly the same in such traits. The answer to
this second question will be of decided significance for vocational
guidance. For example, if it were shown by experimental data that human
females are, by original nature, rather closely alike, whereas human males
differ from one another by wide extremes, we should have scientific grounds
for concluding that social justice and social economy are well served by
the present policy of guiding all females into a single occupation, while
males are encouraged to enter the greatest possible variety of callings.
The first discussion of the comparative variability of the sexes was
broached about a century ago by an anatomist, Meckel. It is very
interesting (as well as amusing), in view of subsequent ideas about
variability, to note what Meckel said. He thought the human female to be
more variable than the human male, and he opined that, "since woman is the
inferior animal and variability is a sign of inferiority," the conclusion
was justified! Fifty years later, when Darwin put a different face upon
variability, showing it to be an advantage and a characteristic affording
the greatest hope for progress, the greater variability of the male began
to be affirmed everywhere in the literature of opinion. Karl Pearson alone
took issue with this view, which was current in the nineteenth century and
is still widely credited, and pointed out that there existed as yet no
literature of fact regarding comparative variability (though men of science
had not on this account restrained themselves from uttering the most
positive statements concerning it). Pearson thereupon actually gathered and
computed hundreds of measurements of human beings, and presented his
results in 1897, in a comprehensive article entitled "Variation in Man and
Woman." He clearly demonstrated that there is, in fact, no indication of
greater male variability, when actual anatomical measurements of adult
human beings are treated with mathematical insight. Immediately Havelock
Ellis, whose opinions were chiefly affected by Pearson's article, replied
that when adults are made the subject of investigation, no information is
gained regarding the matter of inherent or original differences in
variability. Since birth, life and death, on account of social customs,
etc., affect the sexes unequally, no one can say, in the case of adults,
how much may be due to environment and how much to original nature. If
Ellis had thought of this criticism before he wrote his own book, "Man and
Woman," his chapter on "The Variational Tendency of Men" would certainly
not have been published. However, his criticism of Pearson's material is no
less just because he failed to apply it in his own case. It is true that
measurements of adults do not tell us what might be the case with infants,
who have not yet been subjected to the formative and selective influences
of environment and training. Yet Pearson's article remained practically the
only literature of fact regarding the comparative anatomical variability of
the sexes until the year 1914. In 1914 Montague and Hollingworth published
in the _American Journal of Sociology_ an article setting forth in full the
measurements of two thousand new-born infants, one thousand of each sex.
The statistical result shows no difference whatever in variability between
the sexes.
It may seem irrelevant to dwell upon anatomical data, when the purpose of
this chapter is to deal with mental aptitudes. The pertinence of the data
cited, however, lies in the fact that if any sex difference in physical
variability could be established, this would suggest (though it would not
prove) the existence of a sex difference in mental variability also. No
experimental studies have ever been made for the express purpose of
determining whether there exist sex differences in mental variability. Such
scattered data as we possess have come incidentally from studies made with
some other chief purpose in view. Such data were collected and summarized
in the _American Journal of Sociology_ for January, 1914. There was at that
time very little evidence that could be cited on this subject, but such as
there was gave no ground for maintaining the existence of any sex
difference in variability. Since 1914 Trabue's experiments, with
"completion tests," performed on about 1,300 school children, have been
published; the Courtis arithmetic tests on several thousands of school
children in New York have been made public; Terman has tested 1,000
unselected children by the Binet-Simon tests; and Pyle has undertaken his
study in the measurement of school children. The evidence from these
extensive experiments is in all cases that there is no sex difference in
mental variability, as thus measured.
It is necessary also for the reader to bear in mind that there is as yet
much controversy among those best equipped to understand the problems of
variation, as to the proper methods of measuring comparative variability.
The mathematical considerations involved need not be rehearsed here. But
until it has been definitely determined just how comparative variability
can be scientifically measured, it would seem premature to make any final
statement as to sex differences in this respect.
We can therefore answer our second question thus: There is little or no
agreement among those best qualified to speak, as to what constitutes the
scientific method of measuring comparative variability. But according to
the methods now deemed the most reliable, and according to those studies
wherein presumably correct methods of measurement have been employed, there
is no reason to suppose that there is any sex difference in variability, so
far as the numerous traits tested are concerned. There has never been an
experimental study made in which the sampling from both sexes was large,
random, equal, and from groups of equal homogeneity socially and racially,
that showed any reliable sex difference in variability. If we adhere to the
literature of fact, we must conclude that, so far as we know, human females
differ from each other as much as do human males in abilities and
aptitudes.
We now come to the inquiry as to whether there are any special causes of
intellectual inefficiency which affect one sex but not the other. Under
this topic we may consider the periodic function, which characterizes girls
and women, but which does not characterize boys and men. This periodic
function has always been the object of superstition and taboo, and is such
even among the civilized peoples of today. The literature of opinion is
replete with references to it as a source of intellectual weakness and
irresponsibility. We may let Frederick Harrison speak for a large group of
writers on this point:
"Supposing all other forces equal, it is just the percentage of periodical
unfitness which makes the whole difference between the working capacity of
the sexes. It is owing to a very natural shrinking from hard facts, and a
somewhat misplaced conventionality that this fundamental point has been
kept out of sight."
The literature of opinion abounds in different notions, inconsistencies,
and contradictory instances in the matter of the periodic function, and its
alleged enormous influence on the intellectual and vocational life of
women. Much of the opposition to the education of women was based on it,
and it has even been exploited as a good reason why political freedom
should be denied to women. It is positively stated that women are on this
account unfitted to pursue professional and commercial life; yet it is not
proposed that cooks, scrub women, mothers, nursemaids, housekeepers or
dancers should be periodically relieved from their labors and
responsibilities.
There is almost no literature of fact concerning the periodic function as
related to the mental abilities of women. No effort had ever been made to
subject this matter to study by instruments and methods of precision until
very recently. Psychologists, while often stating the influence of
periodicity on mental life to be fundamental and characteristic, entirely
neglected to consider it when performing experiments on women subjects. In
1909 Voitsecovsky, at Petrograd, performed an experiment on six women by
means of instruments of precision. He thought he found a positive result
and that there was shown to be an actual influence of periodicity on
certain mental functions. His conclusions are, however, largely invalidated
by the fact that all his subjects knew the purpose of the experiment, and
by the fact that he neglected to use, as a control, human beings not
subject to the phenomenon in question. He also neglected to present his
data in full, so that the reliability of his conclusions might be
calculated.
Two studies of this phenomenon appeared in 1914. The first was a study by
Dr. A. E. Arnold, as to the effect of school work on the periodic function,
and this is reported in the January number of the _American Physical
Education Review_. This investigator suspected, from his experience as a
physician and teacher, "that much of the incapacity claimed was
fictitious," and he determined, as an experiment, to institute a regime
whereby no student under his supervision would be excused periodically from
mental or physical duties, except in cases where some pathological
condition existed. In summing up the data he says: "So far our results show
all improvement [in the health of students]."
The second study, which appeared in 1914, was by the present writer. She
made a prolonged and careful experimental study of twenty-three women
(using as a control the records of men subjects), and failed to demonstrate
any influence of periodicity on those mental abilities which she tested.
These included speed and accuracy of perception, controlled association,
steadiness, speed of voluntary movement, fatigability, and rate of
learning.
A great amount of scientific work remains to be done before any final
answer of any kind can be given to the question, Does functional
periodicity exercise a fundamental and characteristic influence on the
intellectual abilities of women? We must answer our third question in this
way: There is very little experimental evidence on which to base a reply,
but the few data which we do possess show no influence, either detrimental
or beneficial.
Our fourth inquiry is this: Are there any innate sex differences in
affective or instinctive equipment that would naturally lead to a
vocational differentiation of the sexes? Here we must acknowledge ourselves
to be entirely without a literature of fact. The literature of opinion is
very extensive on the subject, and it would be an interesting and no doubt
an instructive task to collect and summarize the various and conflicting
opinions of men as to the affective and instinctive differences between the
sexes. Men and women as we see them in the world do differ in affective
behavior, but no one can say whether these differences in behavior are
original or acquired. There are different conventional standards of
emotional behavior for men and for women, but no one would be justified in
saying that such standards arose from inherent affective differences
between the sexes. The very variety that characterizes the statements on
this subject constitutes proof of the ignorance of mankind in regard to
it.
Since exact data are entirely lacking, the discussion of this last question
need not detain us. We may, however, glance at one instinct which has
repeatedly been stated to characterize women, and to constitute in itself a
natural justification for differentiating the sexes vocationally. This is
the "maternal instinct." Since the period of helpless infancy is very
prolonged in the human animal, and since the care of infants is an exacting
and onerous labor, it would be natural for those who are not biologically
attached to infants, to use all means at their disposal to fasten the whole
burden of infant-tending upon those who are originally so attached. We
should expect this to happen, and it does happen. There has been a
continuous social effort to establish as a norm the woman whose vocational
proclivities are completely and "naturally" satisfied by child-bearing and
child-rearing.
In the absence of all data, it would seem most reasonable to suppose that
if it were possible to obtain a quantitative measurement of "maternal
instinct," we should find this trait distributed among women just as we
have found all other traits distributed, which have yielded to quantitative
measurement. It is most reasonable to assume that we should obtain a curve
of distribution, varying from an extreme where individuals have a zero or
negative interest in the care of infants, through a mode where there is a
moderate amount of impulse to tend infants, to a second extreme where the
only vocational interest lies in such activity. The bearing and rearing of
children is in many respects analogous to the work of soldiers. It is
necessary to national existence, it means great sacrifice of personal
advantage, and it involves suffering and danger, and, in a certain
percentage of cases, the actual loss of life. Thus, as in the case of
soldiers, every effort is and must be made to establish as a norm the
extreme end of the distribution curve, where there is an all-consuming
interest in patriotism, in the one case, and in motherhood in the other. In
the absence of all scientific data, we should, therefore, guard against
accepting as an established fact about human nature a doctrine that we
might expect to find in use as a means of social control. It is also
fitting to raise the question as to just what is meant by the term,
"maternal instinct." Does it mean desire for offspring which are as yet
non-existent? Does it mean only the tendency to care for helpless offspring
after they are actually in existence? Does it mean an interest in children
as such, regardless of their origin? Or does it consist in a mingling of
all these elements? Above all, does it involve, as an essential element, an
interest in waiting personally upon infants? One certainly gains the
impression from a perusal of the extensive literature of opinion that to
most persons the term is quite unanalyzed, and that it calls for analysis.
We have now considered four of our inquiries in the light of experimental
evidence. We have discovered that a great amount of work remains to be done
before we can answer most of them conclusively, and that to one question,
at least, no answer at all can be given from the literature of fact. We can
only say that, so far, scientific experiment has revealed no sex
differences in the original nature of intellect that would imply a
necessary differentiation of vocations on the ground of sex. There exist no
scientific data to show (1) differences in average intellect; (2)
differences in mental variability; (3) special causes of intellectual
inefficiency affecting one sex but not the other; (4) differences in
affective or instinctive equipment, implying a "natural" division of labor.
The division of labor between the sexes, which has existed through historic
times and still persists, originated, so far as we know, in physiological,
not in psychological differences. The momentous physiological fact that
women bear and nourish infants and men do not, is the great primary sex
difference on which our economic and vocational organization has been built
up. It might be supposed that natural selection would have evolved an
intellectual (or unintellectual) type in women, which could find its
complete natural satisfaction in the vocation of child-bearing and
child-rearing. But such a selection could take place only if mental traits
were sex-limited in inheritance, or existed as secondary sex
characteristics. No mental trait has ever been proved to be sex-limited in
inheritance, or to exist as a secondary sex character. So far as we know,
daughters inherit mental traits from fathers as well as from mothers, and
sons inherit them from mothers as well as from fathers. Under such
circumstances the law of natural selection can never become operative to
solve the vocational problems of women.
The fact that women have not in the past equaled men in "philosophy,
science, art, invention and management" is frequently adduced as evidence
of their innate unfitness for pursuits other than the domestic. From such
evidence, however, we glean in reality no information whatever about the
vocational aptitudes of women. We should not expect any notable
achievement by women in the fields mentioned above, for the following
reasons. Women must bear and nourish infants, and men cannot. The period of
gestation and the period of infancy are very protracted in the human
species, together covering, for each infant reared, about six years. Until
very recently no scientific methods of controlling procreation have been
generally known or utilized. Thus women have borne great numbers of
infants, all their youth and maturity being consumed by bearing and rearing
young. The small minority of women whose lives happened not to be so
consumed would be very unlikely to make any contributions in extra-domestic
vocational achievement for two reasons. In the first place, all women were
expected to mate and thus to procreate and rear offspring, and no provision
was made by society for their training in lines other than those they would
be expected to use. In the second place, those women who did not meet the
common fate failed to do so for some special reason, such as ill health,
mental disease, or the necessity of caring for decrepit relatives. The very
causes of their celibacy would operate also against any vocational
achievement on their part.
In the irrational trial and error method by which our human institutions
have been developed, the logical expectation would be that the great
physiological sex difference in reproductive function would probably
influence vocational activities just as it has done. We find in the
traditional division of labor between the sexes exactly what we should
expect to find, even though there were an identity of intellectual
abilities and interests. It seems both psychologically and socially
desirable that the one incontestable conditioning factor in the vocational
differentiation of men and women be raised clearly to consciousness, rather
than submerged, as in the past, by an elaborate system of defense
mechanisms and traditional devices of social control. It would be going
afield from the immediate purpose of this chapter to offer constructive
suggestions for such changes in economic and domestic management as might
be necessary to overcome this conditioning factor, and thus to give free
vocational opportunity to both sexes alike. To effect these changes in such
a way that the maximum social betterment may be achieved thereby will be a
task not simple but complex. It will call for the best thought and the most
enlightened effort of which we are capable, and will be accomplished only
with the passing of years and decades.
The essential thing at present is to know whether any basis for future
action may now be found in the established facts of human nature. In the
present state of scientific knowledge it would be as dogmatic (and
therefore as undesirable) to state that significant sex differences in
intellect do not exist, as to state that such differences do exist. All we
can say is that up to the present time experimental psychology has
disclosed no sex differences in mental traits which would imply a division
of labor on psychological grounds. The social gain would be very great if
the public could be brought to recognize intelligently that to many of the
questions regarding the vocational aptitudes of women no definite answers
can at present be given, because the necessary data for the formulation of
answers have never been collected. So far as is at present known, women are
as competent intellectually as men are, to undertake any and all human
vocations.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] There was published in the October (1914) issue of the _Psychological
Bulletin_ a summary of all important experimental work done on sex
differences in recent years. Any reader wishing to take up the evidence
greatly in detail will do well to consult all of the references there
given.