With the weakening of sex prejudices and the removal of legal
restrictions on women's freedom it was inevitable that they should
invade fields of activity where formerly only men were found. Since
women must eat every one knew that they must work, and the sight of a
woman at work was no new experience. Even in the days when they were
most secluded and protected, the number kept in ease was always very
small compared with the women slaves and servants who spun, cooked and
served. Hence men were used to seeing women at work; and while
industrial adjustments have not been easily made, they have still been
accepted as a matter of course. But who, fifty years ago, could have
imagined that to-day women would be steadily monopolizing learning,
teaching, literature, the fine arts, music, the church and the theater?
And yet that is the condition at which we have arrived. We may scoff at
the way women are doing the work, and reject the product, but that does
not alter the fact that step by step women are taking over the field of
liberal culture as opposed to the field of immediately productive work.
Some of the reasons for this change are so clear that it seems as though
they might have been anticipated. In a comparatively few years the
greater part of Western Europe and all of America has become rich, not
this time through the enslavement of other peoples and the confiscating
of their wealth, but through the enslaving and exploitation of the
material forces of nature. This wealth is not well distributed, but
large numbers of families have received enough so that the women do not
have to work constantly with their hands. At this point all historic
precedent would have turned these women into luxury-loving parasites and
playthings. A good many of them have taken this easiest way and entered
the peripatetic harems of the rich. But several million women refused to
repeat the old cycle of ruin; they knew too much.[27] What then should
they do? Faith in the value of conventual life for women had passed;
industrial changes had transformed their homes so that the endless
spinning, weaving, sewing and knitting were no longer there, even to be
supervised. Penelope's tasks had passed to foremen, working under trades
union agreements, in the factories of Fall River and Birmingham. Even
the function of the lady bountiful who looked after the spiritual and
family affairs of her tenants and servants and distributed doles and
Christmas baskets was gone. Her tenants owned their own farms, and her
chauffeur resented her interference with his personal life. What should
she do?
[27] RHETA CHILDE DORR, _What Eight Million Women Want,_ Boston: Small,
Maynard & Co., 1910.
And this movement was not confined to the rich, for those who were not
yet economically free were still deeply influenced by the changes which
were taking place. The Goulds, Stanfords, Vanderbilts, Floods, Carnegies
and Schwabs had all been lifted from the level of the masses to
financial grandeur before the eyes of the multitude, and democratic
ambitions drove parents who thought themselves in the line of financial
advancement to secure culture for their girls in time. If the daughter
was destined to live on Fifth Avenue, or to marry a duke, it was best to
get her ready while young. In all our industrial democracies, armies of
American parents have devoted themselves to labor, and even sacrificed
comforts and necessities, that the daughters might get ready to live
easier and fuller lives than the parents had known. If the choice had to
be made between the girl and her brother, the chivalry of the father and
the ambition of the mother very often gave the opportunity to the girl.
And so an emancipated army of leisure has been formed which has
transformed the very nature of the culture with which it has busied
itself. Books, periodicals, musical instruments, travel became cheaper
and cheaper as the demand increased. Wholesale production makes almost
any luxury accessible to every one. It is also possible to find modern
and agreeable forms for older academic exercises. If Greek and Latin
were too full or too difficult, courses in Romanic and Germanic
philology would do as well. Anglo-Saxon gave way to Old English; and
Chaucer to the Lake Poets. Philosophy struggled for favor with the
English novel on equal terms. The works of Raphael were photographed and
lithographed until the Sistine Madonna became as commonly known as the
face of any strenuous and popular statesman of the day. With the aid of
these art productions, and John Addington Symonds, every woman with
leisure became an art critic. If economics was not interesting,
sociology was available; and it could be democratized to any degree
desired. If travel was troublesome, one could leave it to Cook; buy a
ticket and he would do the rest.
If these awakening hungers and corresponding opportunities had affected
only the period of life formerly thought available for education, these
changes would have come about much more slowly than they have. But the
genetic conception of life, steadily popularized since 1870, has led us
to see that education is coterminous with life. It seems strange that we
should have ever thought that mental activity belongs alone to youth.
Dorland's study shows that in a list of four hundred fairly
representative great men, only 10.25% ceased their mental activity
between the ages of forty and fifty; 20.75% between fifty and sixty; 35%
between sixty and seventy; 22.5% between seventy and eighty; and 6%
after eighty.[28]
[28] W.A. NEWMAN DORLAND, _The Age of Mental Virility_. New York: The
Century Company, 1908.
The recognition of such facts as these has given us a new genetic sense
of life, under the influence of which mothers and grandmothers have
joined the younger women in the pursuit of culture. They have formed
clubs--study clubs, current events clubs, camera clubs, art clubs,
literary clubs, civic clubs. They have organized courses of university
extension lectures; enrolled in Chicago University correspondence
courses; and have flocked to Chautauqua by the thousand in the summer,
when not abroad. It is not through the generosity of men that liberal
culture has come into the possession of women; they have carried it by
storm and have compelled capitulation.
Judging by the facts presented in the last chapter, women are pretty
fully in possession of formal education. If we examine this monopoly a
little more carefully, we shall find that while in the kindergarten and
in the elementary schools boys furnish 51% of the enrollment, simply
because more boys are born in civilized communities than girls, as soon
as we reach the high schools, girls increasingly take the lead. In 1910,
the girls formed 56.45% of the enrollment in high schools--or there were
110,249 more girls than boys. The proportion of girls increased through
each of the four years of the course, and of the graduates, 60.8% were
girls. In the public normal schools, 64.45% of the students were girls.
The universities, colleges and technical schools, which are massed
together in our government reports, had hardly any women students in
1870; in 1880, 19.3% of the students were women; in 1890, 27%; in 1910,
30.4%. In all these institutions we had enrolled in 1910, 17,707 women.
Of 602 institutions reported in 1910, 142 were for men only; 108 were
for women only; and 352 were open to both sexes. But here again the
influence of women increases during each of the four years for, as we
have seen, the women took 41.1% of the A.B. degrees granted in 1910. It
is surely not too much to say that, if present conditions continue,
women will soon be in an overwhelming majority in all secondary and
higher education in the United States.
If we examine the teaching force, we find this monopoly already
established. In 1870, when our government records begin, 59% of the
teachers were women; in 1880, 57.2% were women; in 1890, 65.5%; in 1900,
70.1%; in 1910, 78.6%. The more settled and intelligent the community
the more rapid this advance has been. Thus Arkansas has 52.4% women
teachers; but Massachusetts has 91.1% and Connecticut has 93%.
In cities, too, the women fill nearly all teaching positions. New York
City has 89% women in its force; Boston, 89%; Philadelphia, 91.4%;
Chicago, 93.3%. In many cities the proportion is even greater than this:
Omaha has 97%; Wheeling, W. Va., 97.5%; Charleston, S.C., 99.3%; and in
forty-six American towns of 4,000 to 8,000 inhabitants there is no man
teaching. When we remember that many of the men indicated above are in
high schools or in supervising posts, we are prepared for the statement
in a report recently laid before the Board of Education of New York City
that in half the cities of the United States there are virtually no men
teaching.
In our high schools, 54% of the teachers are women; in public normal
schools, 65%; and in institutions of higher learning 17.6% are women.
Even in supervising positions, there are more women than men in the
large centers of population. Certainly these figures justify us in
saying that women have established a monopoly of education in the United
States, except in the higher institutions.
In order to discuss the effects which this monopoly of education by
women is having on the curriculum of the schools we must first agree on
what constitutes the peculiarity of women's minds as compared with men's
minds.[29] In our first chapter, it was asserted that women are more
interested in the concrete, human, personal, conserving and emotional
aspects of life; while men more easily turn to the abstract, material,
impersonal, creative and rational aspects. To put it broadly, women are
more interested in the humanities; men more readily pursue the sciences.
Let us admit at once that there are many individual exceptions to this
statement. Some women have reached great excellence in abstract studies;
and some men are notoriously concrete and emotional; but nevertheless
the general statement seems borne out by a wealth of common observations
and detailed comparisons.
[29] See _The Americans_, by HUGO MÜNSTERBERG, pp. 558-589. Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901.
Personal observation must always be colored by prejudices and
prepossessions, but my own have been so wide, and so uniformly in one
direction, that it seems justifiable to report them.
* * * * *
For a quarter of a century I have been working in schools or with
teachers, and my personal observations all agree with the above
characterization. I have spent five years in Cornell University, New
York; one year in Zurich University in Switzerland; two years in the
State University of Indiana and seven years in Stanford University in
California. These institutions are widely distributed; they were all
fully co-educational; and they each had a wide range of elective
studies. In all of them, class-rooms devoted to literature and modern
languages had a large attendance of women, while lecture-rooms and
laboratories devoted to abstract science were almost deserted by them.
This could not have been due to commercial considerations, for many of
these women were facing teaching; and during all this time the demand
for women who could teach science has been much greater than for women
who could teach literature.
In my work with teachers, both in the classroom and in the field, I have
carried out many inductive, quantitative studies, based on measurements
or returns from large numbers of children. I have never found women
teachers taking up and carrying out this kind of work with any such
enthusiasm as men apply to it, though it lies at the base of their
professional life.
Institutional generalizations seem all to point in this same direction.
For instance, the Girls' Evening High School in Philadelphia is managed
by one of the best known scientific women in the country, Dr. L.L.W.
Wilson, head of the biological department of the Philadelphia Normal
School. With a thousand girls of high school grade, under the leadership
of a scientific woman, the only science courses given in the school are
those in domestic science. The reason is that the girls, most of them
not being candidates for a degree, will not take up science work, though
they form strong classes in literature and languages.
If, from such general facts of observation, one turns to exact
comparisons, where quantities can be measured, the results are all the
same. Of students enrolled in classical departments of universities,
colleges and technical schools reporting to the United States Bureau of
Education, in 1910, 36.5% were women, while of those enrolled in general
science courses, but 17.2% were women. In 1,511 public and private high
schools and seminaries, reporting to the Bureau of Education in
1909-1910, a larger percentage of boys than of girls was enrolled in
algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, physical geography,
civil government and rhetoric, which is a scientific study of language.
A larger proportion of girls enrolled in Latin, French, German, English
literature and history, and there was a slightly greater enrollment of
girls in botany, zoology and physiology.
In the further discussion of this subject it will then be taken for
granted that in education, feminization means emphasis on languages,
literature and history, as opposed to mathematics, physics, chemistry
and civics. For the elementary schools we have no data capable of
reduction to figures, but general observation, backed by an examination
of courses of study and textbooks, will compel any one to say that in
twenty years we have made wonderful progress in reading, language,
stories, mythology, biography and history; while all our efforts to
bring nature work into vital relation with the schools have borne little
fruit. Our country schools need lessons in agriculture, and the children
should gain a deep sense of country life. But how can celibate young
women, longing toward the towns, give this? Any subjects well taught are
sure to be increasingly taught, and it takes no extended study to see
that our elementary schools are being feminized in the direction of
literature. This is the more striking when we remember that these twenty
years have been dominated, in the larger world, by scientific interests.
In the high schools and seminaries, we have fairly complete returns
showing the number of students enrolled in certain subjects since 1890.
The pupils taking Latin have increased 15%; French, 4%; German, 13%;
English literature has increased in ten years 7% (there is no record for
this subject before 1898); and European history, 27%. There has also
been an increase of 11% in algebra and 10% in geometry, probably partly
due to vocational need and to the emphasis laid on these subjects for
admission to college. But physics, in the twenty years under
consideration, has fallen off 7%; chemistry, 3%; physical geography, 5%;
physiology, 15%; and civics, 7%.[30] A careful study of these figures
must convince any fair-minded person that our school curriculum, even in
the secondary field, where women's control is least complete, is moving
rapidly in the direction of what we have called feminization.
[30] _Report of the United States Commissioner of Education_, 1910, Vol.
II, p. 1139.
The schools, too, must increasingly do something more than train the
intellect; and in all physical activity involuntary suggestion is very
powerful. Playgrounds are laboratories of conduct, and they should not
only give physical exercise, but should also furnish standards and
ideals. There can be no doubt that women are physically more restrained,
retiring, non-contesting, and graceful than men; but can dancing,
marching, and gymnastics take the place of more aggressive, direct and
violent contests in the training of boys? So in industries, women are
more given to conserving, arranging and beautifying, more given to
clerking and recording, while men are more creative, disbursing, more
given to mining, agriculture and commerce. Even granting equal
understanding and experience, the tradition of the race must count for
much; and it would seem that at every stage of growth, boys and girls
alike should feel the impulse to imitate men who have an instinct to
make and unmake, to trade and carry. It is no justification of existing
conditions to say that the men now in the teaching profession lack
these qualities; if they do, let us get rid of them and have real men.
And for purposes of political life, does it not seem strange to bring up
a generation of boys and girls who are to be the future citizens of a
democracy under the exclusive leadership of people who have never been
encouraged to think about political life nor allowed to participate in
it? Let us by all means enfranchise women; but even then they cannot
hope to quickly catch up with those who have some thousands of years the
start, even after allowing for the fact that girls inherit from both
father and mother.
Most of these differences which we have been discussing seem to rest in
the fact that women are more personal in their interests and judgments
than men are. This may be due to their education for thousands of years;
but that makes it no less true. Women certainly, in a great majority of
cases, are more interested in a case than in a constitution; in a man
than in a mission; in a poem that in a treatise; in equity than in law.
In a generation when everything is tending toward great aggregations,
consolidated industries, segregated wealth, and new syntheses of
knowledge, both boys and girls should have such training as will fit
them to play their part in these larger units.
As to the feminizing influence of exclusively women teachers on manners
and morals and general attitude toward life there can be no real doubt.
Boys and girls cannot spend eight or twelve impressionable years of
childhood and youth under the constant daily influence of women without
having the ladylike attitude toward life strongly emphasized. To deny
this is to repudiate the power of constant involuntary suggestion and
association. Whether it is desirable or not, is another question. The
change may be all in the direction of advancing civilization; but just
as in the assimilation of our subject races, the philosophic mind must
be distressed by the disappearance of so many varieties of speech,
customs, and artistic and industrial products, so in this present
assimilation, one cannot help regretting the steady disappearance of the
katabolic qualities of the human male. One does not need to say that
this feminized product is better or worse than what we have had, but it
is certainly narrower, and less in harmony with the world's thought and
work, than it formerly was.
If we turn from education to the press we have similar conditions.
During these past few years, hundreds of journals have sprung up devoted
to women's special interests. They are almost all of them showy,
fragmentary, personal, concrete and emotional. It is difficult to find
one that represents general or abstract interests. At least one of these
journals which boasts a fabulous circulation is supported by its women
subscribers and readers to oppose the larger interests of women in
education, industry and political life. At least, if it does not oppose
these interests, it does not aid them. Imagine a million German women
sending the Kaiser one dollar and a half a year to induce him to tell
them once a month to go back to their kitchens, churches and children!
The newspapers of America have steadily changed during the last three
decades in the same direction. Editorial pages and news columns have
been steadily modified in the direction of fragmentary, egoistic,
personal and sensational, or at least emotional, appeals. These are the
qualities of children's minds and of undeveloped minds everywhere. The
change is, of course, a part of the larger democratic movement of our
time, and many causes have contributed to bring it about. Had women not
been so active, something of the same sort would have happened; but if
women were all to forget how to read overnight, there is little doubt
that the newspapers would find it advantageous to print more
statesmanlike editorials and more general and abstract news.
With the weeklies and monthlies, the change taking place is the same.
The new reading public, brought in by increase in population and by
popular education, does not support the _Atlantic_, the _Century_ and
_Scribner's,_ but turns to _Munsey's_, _McClure's_ and _Everybody's_.
The very change in names speaks of the new personal and egoistic element
that has come into journalism. Of course, such changes are only in part
due to the influence of women, but the change is in the direction of the
qualities that characterize distinctively women's journals.
In books, the personal and romantic novel has taken precedence over
every other form of literature. Many of these are written by women;
their circulation, both through libraries and through sales, is much
greater with women than with men; and in many of them the personal
gossip is as transient as that which fills the evening papers.[31]
[31] _The Feminine Note in Fiction_, by W.L. COURTNEY, London, Chapman &
Hall, 1904; the author tries to prove that there is such a thing as a
feminine style in fiction.
In the churches, especially in the ritualistic churches, women have long
been the faithful attendants. Nowhere, except in the churches which make
a rationalistic and abstract appeal, and in the Ethical Societies, does
one find a preponderance of men. In 1903, a careful enumeration of all
attendants at places of worship was made in the city of London. The
count was taken on fair Sundays in autumn, and covered both morning and
evening services. Sixty-one per cent. of all adult attendants were
women, 146,372 more women than men passing through the doors.
About the same time a similar census was made in the part of New York
City lying on Manhattan Island. The women were in excess by 171,749,
and formed 69 per cent. of all attendants. Even church service, if not
entirely tied to set forms, must seek to interest those who occupy the
pews; and no observer can fail to note in both England and America, a
movement toward ritualism on the one hand, and on the other, toward
popular, personal, concrete and sometimes sensational preaching. The
same general changes are taking place in libraries, in the drama, in
concerts, in all group activities connected with learning and the fine
arts.
But on the other side, if emancipated women had not applied themselves,
since 1870, to the direction of education, literature, religion and
amusements, all these interests must have suffered serious neglect and
probable deterioration through the concentrating of the interests of the
ablest men in engineering, manufacturing, commerce and other fields of
pure and applied science. By popularizing these interests, women have
really humanized them, as all similar revolutions have done in the past.
In breaking up old forms and intellectual conventions they have set free
new and vital impulses. Whether the historian of the future will
consider this period of democratization and feminization a time of
advance may be uncertain; but it is certainly a time of liberated energy
and of broadening participation in all that is best in life.
V