In dealing with the training for marriage, I pointed out that the
qualities which make for success in the matrimonial market have
little or no connection with the qualities required for the efficient
performance of what is supposed to be the life-work of woman—the
care of home, of husband and of children. I pointed out that the
characteristics which are likely to obtain for a girl a desirable
husband are not the same characteristics which will have to be brought
into play if the husband, when he is obtained, is to find in her a
desirable wife from the domestic point of view; and that, as a general
rule, she is promoted to what should be the important and responsible
position of wife and mother on the strength of attainments which have
nothing to do with her fitness for the duties of that position.
The habit of judging a woman entirely by externals—appearance, dress,
and manners—is not confined to the man who is in search of a wife.
(“Judging” is, perhaps, the wrong phrase to use—it is, rather, a habit
of resigning judgment so as to fall completely under the influence of
externals.) It is very general amongst all classes of male employers,
and its result is, it seems to me, a serious bar to efficiency in
women’s work. It pays better in the marriage market to be attractive
than to be efficient, and in a somewhat lesser degree the same rule
holds good in certain other departments of women’s labour.
To a certain degree, of course, a man’s fitness for any particular work
is judged by externals; but never to the same degree as a woman’s.
Further, the judgment passed upon a man who is chosen to fill a
vacancy because his prospective employer “likes the look of him” has
some relation to the qualities which will be required of him in the
execution of the duties he will be called upon to perform—it is not
biased by irrelevant considerations of sex. A merchant will like the
looks of a clerk who has the outward appearance of being smart, well
mannered, well educated, and intelligent; an employer who wishes to
engage a man for work which involves the carrying of heavy sacks will
like the looks of a man who is possessed of muscular arms and a pair of
broad shoulders. In each case he is favourably influenced by the man’s
externals because they seem to him to indicate the qualities which he
requires in his prospective employé.
The number of men who could engage a young woman to work under them
on this purely commercial and unemotional basis is, I should say,
comparatively limited. I do not mean, of course, that the element of
sexual attraction enters consciously into the calculations of the
ordinary male employer when engaging a woman, but it certainly enters
unconsciously into the calculations of a good many. A man who says
that he likes the looks of a girl whom he has engaged to fill the
position of typist or cashier, does not usually mean at all the same
thing that he means when he says that he likes the looks of his new
porter or junior clerk: he does not mean that the girl strikes him as
appearing particularly fitted for the duties of typist or cashier—more
alert, more intelligent, or more experienced than her unsuccessful
competitors for the post—but that she has the precise shape of nose,
the exact shade of hair, or the particular variety of smile or manner
that he admires and finds pleasing. That is to say, he is influenced in
engaging her by considerations unconnected with her probable fitness
for the duties of her post, since a straight nose, auburn hair, or
an engaging smile have no necessary connection with proficiency in
typewriting or accounts.
I am not insisting on this intrusion of the sexual element into the
business relations of men and women in any fault-finding spirit; I
call attention to it merely in order to show that the conditions
under which women obtain their bread in the labour market are not
precisely the same as the conditions under which men obtain theirs.
The intrusion of the sexual element into commercial relations may be
not only unavoidable, but defensible and desirable, on other than
commercial grounds; but it must be admitted that it does not tend to
encourage efficiency, and the necessary discouragement of efficiency
should be taken into account in estimating the value of woman’s
work in many departments of the labour market. I do not know whether
the consciousness that they are liable to be promoted or degraded
in business matters for reasons which have nothing to do with their
business merits or demerits is humiliating or the reverse to the
majority of women, but I do know that it is humiliating to some. (Not
only to those who are deficient in good looks; I have frequently
heard it resented by those whom the system favoured.) There is, too,
a certain amount of irritating uncertainty about the working of the
system, one man’s taste in feminine looks varying from that of his
next-door neighbour.
As in marriage, so in other departments of the labour market, the
result of this tendency to appraise a woman on the strength of
externals alone has been the intellectual deterioration of the
good-looking girl. I should be very sorry to have to maintain that
the good-looking girl is necessarily born less intelligent than her
plainer sister; but I do not think that it can be denied that it is
made extremely easy for her to become so. The conspicuously attractive
girl who enters a trade or business usually takes a very short time to
find out that her advancement depends more on her conspicuous personal
attractions than on the steady work and strict attendance to business
which has to be rendered by the woman less bountifully endowed by
nature. Hence she has every inducement to be less thorough in her work,
less intelligent, less reliable, and less trustworthy. The deep-rooted
masculine conviction that brains and repulsiveness invariably go
together in woman has this much justification in fact—the unattractive
girl has to rely on her work and intelligence for advancement and
livelihood, and, therefore, is not exposed to the temptation to allow
her brains to run to seed as unnecessary. There is plenty of proof that
the temptation is often resisted by the woman born beautiful; but she
is exposed to it all the same, and is not to be over blamed when she
succumbs.
There is one other disadvantage under which women’s work in the paid
labour market is apt to suffer—a disadvantage from which men’s work is
exempt, and which is directly traceable to the idea that marriage is
woman’s only trade. I alluded to it in an earlier chapter when I spoke
of the common masculine attitude on the subject of feminine competition
and the common masculine conviction that woman can somehow manage to
exist without the means of supporting existence. One result of the
assumption that every woman is provided with the necessaries of life by
a husband, father, or other male relative is that the atmosphere which
surrounds the working-woman is considerably more chilling than that
which surrounds the working-man. His right to work is recognized; hers
is not. He is more or less helped, stimulated, and encouraged to work;
she is not. On the contrary, her entry into the paid labour market
is often discouraged and resented. The difference is, perhaps, most
clearly marked in those middle-class families where sons and daughters
alike have no expectation of independence by inheritance, but where
money, time, and energy are spent in the anxious endeavour to train and
find suitable openings for the sons, and the daughters left to shift
for themselves and find openings as they can. The young man begins his
life in an atmosphere of encouragement and help; the young woman in
one of discouragement, or, at best, of indifference. Her brother’s
work is recognized as something essentially important; hers despised as
something essentially unimportant—even although it brings her in her
bread. Efforts are made to stimulate his energy, his desire to succeed;
no such efforts are made to stimulate hers.... And it is something, in
starting work, to feel that you are engaged on work that matters.