THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF WOMEN
I
It is to the industrial revolution more than anything else, perhaps,
that women owe such freedom as they now enjoy; yet if proof were
wanting of the distance they have still to cover in order to attain,
not freedom, but mere equality with men, their position in the
industrial world would amply supply it. Men in industry suffer from
injustices and hardships due to the overcrowding of the labour-market.
Women suffer from these same injustices and hardships; and they have
an additional handicap in their sex. The world of work, embracing
industry, business, the professions, is primarily a man’s world. Women
are admitted, but not yet on an equal footing. Their opportunities
for employment are restricted, sometimes by law, but more often by
lack of training; and their remuneration as wage-earners and salaried
workers is generally less than that of men. They have to contend with
traditional notions of what occupations are fitting for their sex;
with the jealousy of male workers; with the prejudices of employers;
and finally with their own inertia and their own addiction to
traditional concepts. All these difficulties are immensely aggravated
by the keenness of the competition for work. If the opportunity to work
were, as it should be, an unimpeded right instead of a privilege doled
out by an employer, these handicaps of women would be easily overridden
by the demand for their labour. I shall discuss this point more fully
later on. It is sufficient here to note that when the war created a
temporary shortage of labour, women were not only employed in, but
were urged in the name of patriotism to enter, occupations in which
until then only men had been employed. The effect of this temporary
shortage on their industrial opportunities affords a hint of what their
position would be if the glutting of the labour-market were permanently
relieved. A shortage of labour means opportunity for the worker, male
or female.
Women have always been industrial workers. Otis T. Mason even went
so far as to declare that “All the peaceful arts of today were once
woman’s peculiar province. Along the lines of industrialism she was
pioneer, inventor, author, originator.” This view is in rather
striking contrast with the contemptuous derogation which has been for
a long time current in European civilization, and has found expression
in such cutting remarks as that of Proudhon, that woman “could not even
invent her own distaff.” It is no doubt a fairer view, although it
is probably somewhat exaggerated. There is certainly no valid reason
to suppose that sex is a barrier to the invention and improvement of
industrial processes. Be this as it may, it is undeniable that women
have always been producers. Among some primitive tribes, indeed, they
are the only industrialists, the men occupying themselves with war and
the chase or, among maritime peoples, with fishing. The modern invasion
of the industrial field by women does not, then, represent an attempt
to do something that women have never done before. It does represent
an attempt to adapt themselves to the new conditions created by the
industrial revolution.
The range of their opportunities has been considerably restricted by
prejudices arising from the traditional sexual division of labour in
European society. “In the developed barbarism of Europe, only a few
simple household industries were on the whole left to women.”[26] It
was natural, then, when women followed industry into the larger field
of machine-production, that it should be assumed that the industries
in which they might fittingly engage would be those most nearly akin
to the occupations which European society has regarded as peculiarly
feminine. Before the World War, according to the Women’s Bureau,
“over seventy-five per cent of all women engaged in manufacture were
concentrated in the textile and garment-making industries”; and we have
the same authority for the statement that “except for certain branches
of food-manufacture--such as flour making ... women constitute from a
third to two-thirds of the working forces in the industries concerned
with the business of clothing and feeding both the fighting and the
civilian population.” The new opportunities opened up by the exigency
of the war-period widened considerably the scope of women’s activity;
they were employed in machine-shops and tool-rooms, in steel- and
rolling-mills, in instrument-factories, in factories manufacturing
sewing machines and typewriters, in utensil-factories, in plants
working in rubber and leather, in wood-working industries.
In some of these industries women continue to be employed. In others
they were discharged to make room for men when the emergency was
over. But even where they continue to be employed their opportunities
for training are not equal to those of men. The Women’s Bureau in
1922 issued a valuable bulletin on “Industrial Opportunities and
Training for Women and Girls.” According to this bulletin, the
war-experience of women in new employments made it apparent that the
most promising future for craftswomen in these fields lies in (a)
machine-shops where light parts are made, (b) wood-product factories
where assembling and finishing are important processes, (c) optical-
and instrument-factories, (d) sheet-metal shops. The survey made by
the Bureau to discover how many of the country’s industrial training
schools were fitting women for these trades disclosed the fact that
in nine States where women, because of industrial conditions, are
most in need of training for machine-shop, sheet-metal, furniture, or
optical work, they are either excluded by public vocational schools
from the courses in such works, or they are not encouraged, as men are,
to enter those courses. In Ohio, for example, women were enrolled in
only five of the fifty-three public vocational schools reporting, and
in these five schools they were taught dressmaking, costume-design,
dress-pattern making, embroidery, power-machine sewing, and pottery
making. Men on the other hand, received instruction in the following
courses which women needed: machine-shop practice, tool-making, shop
mathematics, mechanical drafting, blue-print reading, metallurgy,
pattern-making, sheet-metal work, welding, auto-mechanics and repair,
motor-cycle mechanics, gas engineering, cabinet-making and woodworking.
Women were not debarred by rule or law from entering these courses, but
they were not encouraged to do so. The courses, as one superintendent
wrote, were “designed for men.” The situation in Ohio is more or less
the same as that in the other eight States. Women are either not
admitted to vocational courses designed to prepare workers for the
industries cited, or they are not encouraged to enroll. Yet, as the
Bureau points out, these institutions are operated at the expense of
the taxpayers, women as well as men, and their equipment should be
used to serve women as well as men. “It is obvious,” says the Bureau,
“that the public vocational school authorities, with few exceptions,
think of trade for women only in terms of dressmaking and millinery,
and are as yet quite oblivious to the fact that these trades, except in
certain clothing centers, are not the big employers of woman labour,
nor are they always the best trades at which to earn a livelihood. It
is the semi-public school that is beginning first to recognize the new
position which woman occupies in industry as a result of the war and
is opening to her its doors and guiding her into courses leading to
efficiency in the new occupations.”
This blindness of the school authorities to the vocational needs of
women goes to prove how strong is the force of traditional prejudices.
The making of clothing has been largely in the hands of women for so
long that even in cities where the only industries employing women
are mechanical or woodworking, the public schools offer them courses
in sewing and millinery. Prepossession does not yield all at once to
established fact. If women can make a permanent place for themselves
in their new occupations, public officials will eventually come to
associate them with these occupations and follow the lead of the
semi-public schools in fitting girls to engage in them on an equal
footing with boys. But it will take time; and meanwhile women will
continue to be at a disadvantage in entering these occupations. So
will they be at a disadvantage in entering any occupation where they
have not before been employed, or where they are employed only in
insignificant numbers, so long as prejudice or conservatism continues
to debar them, and the necessary training is not as freely available to
them as it is to men.
Above all, so long as their industrial status continues to be, as the
Women’s Bureau expresses it, “subsidiary to their home status,” they
can never be on a really secure footing in the industrial world. While
employers assume that all male workers have families to support and
that all female workers are in industry rather through choice than
necessity and may, in periods when work is slack, fall back on the
support of male relatives, so long will women be the first workers
to suffer from any slowing down of industry. This was strikingly
illustrated during the period of unemployment which succeeded the
intense industrial activity made necessary by the war, when women were
discharged in great numbers to make room for men, and much resentment
was voiced against their retention in places which might be filled by
men. “Back to the home,” says the Women’s Bureau, “was a slogan all
too easily and indiscriminately flung at the wage-earning woman by
those who had little conception of the causes which forced her into
wage-earning pursuits.” In periods of industrial depression it appears
to be the regular practice to lay off the married women workers first,
then the single women, and the men last.
How unjust to the woman worker, and how little justified by actual
facts, is this survival of the idea that woman’s place is the home,
has been shown through investigations undertaken by the Women’s Bureau
and other agencies. The results of these investigations, published
in Bulletin No. 30 of the Women’s Bureau, show that the woman in
industry is not merely working for pin-money, as thoughtless people
assume, but that she is more often not only supporting herself on
her inadequate wage, but contributing materially to the support of
dependents. “Contributing all earnings to the family fund,” says the
Bureau, “is a very general practice among wage-earning women.” This of
course means, as the Bureau remarks, that however much or little her
contribution may mean to the family, for the woman herself it means
a surrender of economic independence. The contrast between single men
and single women in this respect is significant. In an investigation
conducted among workers in the shoe-making industry of Manchester,
New Hampshire, the Bureau found that “comparing single men and women,
the women contributed (to the family income) more extensively, both
actually and relatively.” The percentage of earnings contributed by
sons and daughters is particularly interesting. The Bureau found that
“in the families with per capita earnings of less than $500, 49.3
per cent of the sons and 71.6 per cent of the daughters contributed
all their earnings, while in families with per capita earnings of
$500 or more, 36.8 per cent of the sons and 53.4 per cent of the
daughters contributed all earnings.” When one remembers that the wage
paid to women was so much lower than that paid to men that the Bureau
pronounced them to be scarcely comparable, the fact that “the daughters
contributed a somewhat larger proportion of the family earnings than
did the sons” takes on added significance. The sons contributed almost
as much in actual money as the daughters, but out of their higher wages
they retained something for themselves, “thus assuring themselves of a
degree of independence and an opportunity to strike out for themselves
which is denied the daughters.”
It is evident, then, that women, even in the “emancipation” of the
industrial world, are continuing their immemorial self-sacrifice
to the family, and that it is not the married woman alone, but the
single woman as well, who makes this sacrifice. The conditions of the
sacrifice have changed with the changes in industry, but the sacrifice
continues. The productive labour of women appears to be quite as
indispensable to their families as it was in the days when they spun
and wove and sewed and baked at home. This being the case, there is
obviously no other ground than prejudice for the assumption that men,
as the natural providers, should have preference in the labour-market.
According to the census of 1920, thirty-five per cent of the men in the
country are single; therefore it is fair to assume that thirty-five
per cent of the men in industry are single. Two-thirds of the women in
industry are single, but the available figures show that a much larger
percentage of these women than of single men are contributing all or
most of their earnings to their families, while married women workers
are contributing all of their earnings. In view of these figures,
there is patent injustice in the assumption that all men and no women
have dependents to support.
So is there injustice in the assumption that women are naturally at
least partly dependent on male workers, and therefore may fairly be
forced to accept a smaller wage than men. This assumption is not only
grossly unfair to the woman worker, but it does not tally with fact. A
fine example of the kind of defence for the practice of sweating women
workers that can be based on this assumption is quoted by the Women’s
Bureau from an unnamed commercial magazine. “Eighty-six per cent of
women workers,” runs this masterpiece of sophistry, “live at home or
with relatives. [So, in all likelihood, do eighty-six per cent of male
workers.] It is immaterial in these cases whether the earnings of each
measure up to the cost of living scheduled for a single woman living
alone, so that the theory of the need of a sufficient wage to support a
single woman living alone does not apply to eighty-six per cent of the
entire population [_sic_].” This quotation, says the Bureau, is typical
of the attitude of the employer who pays his women employees less than
a living wage on the plea that they live at home and therefore have
few expenses. It is equally remarkable in its ruthless disregard of
the just claim of the woman worker to the same share in the product of
her toil that the male worker is allowed; and in its disregard of the
fact that so long as eighty-six per cent of women workers are forced to
accept a starvation-wage because they live at home, the other fourteen
per cent who do not live at home will be forced by the pressure of
competition to accept the same starvation-wage. The question how this
fourteen per cent will eke out a living--whether through overwork,
begging or prostitution--does not of course concern the employer; for
it is one of the striking differences between chattel-slavery and
wage-slavery that the owner of the wage-slave is under no obligation to
keep his workers from starving. That is, presumably, their own lookout.
If employers are not given to concerning themselves with this question,
however, communities are. Thirteen States have enacted laws fixing a
minimum wage for women, three have fixed minimum wages in specified
occupations, one has fixed a minimum wage which its industrial welfare
commission has power to change, and nine have created boards or
commissions with power to fix minimum wage-rates. It may be noted that
in those States where the rate is fixed by law, it has not responded
to the rising cost of living. In Utah and Arkansas, for example,
the minimum wage for an experienced woman is $7.50 a week. There is
constant effort by interested individuals and organizations to get
similar laws enacted in other States, in spite of the fact that in 1923
the Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional the
minimum wage-law of the District of Columbia. Such efforts, of course,
are in reality efforts to secure class-legislation, as are all attempts
to secure special enactments designed to benefit or protect women.
Of such enactments there is an ever increasing number. So rapidly
do they increase, indeed, that women may be said to be in a fair
way to exchange the tyranny of men for that of organized uplift.
They are sponsored by those well-meaning individuals who deplore
social injustice enough to yearn to mitigate its evil results, but
do not understand it well enough to attack its causes; by women’s
organizations whose intelligence is hardly commensurate with their zeal
to uplift their sex; and by men’s labour-organizations which are quite
frankly in favour of any legislation that will lessen the chances of
women to compete with men in the labour-market.[27] Given the combined
suasion of these forces, and the inveterate sentimentalism which makes
it hard for legislators to resist any plea on behalf of “the women
and children,” almost anything in the way of rash and ill-considered
legislation is possible, and even probable. There is on the
statute-books of the various States an imposing array of laws designed
to “protect” women workers. There are only four States which do not
in some way limit the hours of work for women; there are eleven which
limit the number of successive days that they may work; fourteen have
fixed the amount of time that shall be allowed them for their midday
meal; twelve have ruled that a woman may work only a given number of
hours without a rest-period. Sixteen States prohibit night-work in
certain industries or occupations; two limit her hours of night-work to
eight. There is also a tendency to extend to women special protection
against the hazards of industry. In seventeen States the employment of
women in mines is prohibited. Two States prohibit their employment in
any industry using abrasives. In four States they are not allowed to
oil moving machinery. Three regulate their employment in core-making;
and four regulate the amount of the weight that they may be required to
lift--the maximum ranging, oddly enough, from fifteen pounds in Ohio
and Pennsylvania to seventy-four pounds in Massachusetts. In addition
to those regulations which prohibit women from working in certain
occupations or under certain conditions, “each State,” says the Women’s
Bureau, “has many laws and rulings which prescribe the conditions
under which women should work, covering such matters as the lifting
of weights, provision of seats, and proper provision for sanitation
and comfort.” In six States, industrial commissions have power to make
regulations for the health and welfare of workers. In three, the
commissions have power to make regulations for women and minors only,
and in one, for women, minors, learners, and apprentices.
Perhaps the most striking thing about all these multiform regulations
governing the employment of women is the amount of misplaced zeal that
they denote. “In most cases,” says the Women’s Bureau, “the laws which
prohibit their employment have little bearing on the real hazards to
which they are exposed.... Prohibiting the employment of women on
certain dusty processes does not solve the problem of any industrial
disease in a community. Men are also liable to contract pulmonary
diseases from exposure to dusts.... It is very possible that under the
guise of ‘protection’ women may be shut out from occupations which are
really less harmful to them than much of the tedious, heavy work both
in the home and in the factory which has long been considered their
special province. _Safe standards of work for women must come to be
safe standards for men also if women are to have an equal chance in
industry._” The italics are mine. It is worth mentioning here that
only two States prohibit the employment of women in the lead-industry,
which so far is the only one that has been proved more harmful to
women than to men. The mass of legislation and regulation designed
to protect women from the fatigues and hazards of industry would
seem, then, to have been animated more by chivalry than by scientific
knowledge; and while chivalry may be all very well in its place, it can
hardly be expected to solve the industrial problem of women.
In connexion with so-called welfare-legislation, it is interesting
to observe that women and children are customarily grouped together
as classes requiring protection; and that various laws affecting
their position in industry have been sanctioned by the courts as
being for the good of the race and therefore not to be regarded
as class-legislation. Such decisions certainly would appear to be
reasonable in so far as they apply to children, who are the rising
generation of men and women, and should be protected during their
immaturity. But they can be held valid as they affect women only if
woman is regarded as primarily a reproductive function. This view,
apparently, is held by most legislators, courts, and uplifters; and
they have an unquestionable right to hold it. Whether, however,
they are just in attempting to add to the burdens of the working
woman by imposing it upon her in the form of rules that restrict
her opportunities, is another question. One thing is certain: if
discriminative laws and customs are to continue to restrict the
opportunities of women and hamper them in their undertakings, it makes
little difference for whose benefit those laws and customs are supposed
to operate, whether for the benefit of men, of the home, of the race,
or of women themselves; their effect on the mind of woman and her
opportunities, will be the same. While society discriminates against
her sex, for whatever reason, she can not be free as an individual.
Should nothing, then, be done to protect women from the disabilities
and hazards to which they are subject in the industrial world? Better
nothing, perhaps, than protection which creates new disabilities.
Laws which fix fewer hours of work for women than for men may
result in shortening men’s hours also in factories where many women
are employed; but they may result in the substitution of men--or
children--for women in factories where but few have been employed.
Laws prohibiting night-work may reduce the chances of women to get
much-needed employment, and may sometimes shut them out of work which
would offer higher returns on their labour than anything they might
get to do during the day--as, for example, night-work in restaurants,
where the generous tips of after-theatre patrons add considerably to
the earnings of waiters. Moreover, it is hard to see on what ground
night-work could be held to be more harmful for women than for men.
Minimum-wage laws may fix a legal limit to the greed of employers, but
they can not prevent the underpayment of women workers, for they are
based on theoretical notions of a living wage, and have no relation to
the actual value of the individual’s labour. Where they are fixed by
law, as I have remarked, a rise in the cost of living may render them
ineffectual. As for those laws which undertake to protect women against
the hazards of industry, they have usually, as the Women’s Bureau has
shown, very little relation to the hazards to which women are actually
exposed; but they constitute a real barrier to industrial opportunity.
On the whole, the vast and unwieldy array of laws and rules designed
either to protect the woman worker, or to safeguard the future of the
race at her expense, are a pretty lame result of a great deal of
humanitarian sound and fury. _Parturiunt montes._
It is quite natural that the result should be lame; for these
protections and safeguards represent so many attempts to mind some one
else’s business; and the great difficulty about minding some one else’s
business is that however good one’s intentions may be, one can never
really know just where that some one’s real interests lie, or perfectly
understand the circumstances under which he may be most advantageously
placed in the way to advance them, for the circumstances are too
intimately bound up with his peculiar temperament and situation. As
Mill has remarked in a passage which I have already quoted, the world
has learned by long experience that affairs in which the individual
is the person directly interested go right only when they are left to
his own discretion, and that any interference by authority, save to
protect the rights of others, is mischievous. The tendency of modern
welfare-legislation is to make a complete sacrifice of individual
rights not to the rights but to the hypothetical interests of others;
and for every individual who happens to benefit by the sacrifice, there
is another who suffers by it. If it is hard to regulate one human
being for his own good, it is impossible to regulate people _en masse_
for their own good; for there is no way of making a general rule affect
all individuals in the same way, since no two individuals are to be
found who are of precisely the same temperament and in precisely the
same situation.
There is in all this bungling effort to ameliorate the ills of working
women and to safeguard through them the future of the race, a tacit
recognition of economic injustice and a strange incuriousness about
its causes. One would naturally expect that the conditions which move
people to seek protective legislation would move them to question the
nature of an economic system which permits such rapacity that any class
of employees requires to be protected from it. Surely the forces of
righteousness must know that there are reasons for the existence of
the conditions which move them to pity and alarm; yet they seem quite
willing to go on indefinitely battling against the conditions, and
winning with great effort legislative victories which are constantly
being rendered ineffectual through lax administration of laws, through
the reluctance of employees to jeopardize their positions by testifying
against employers, or through unforeseen changes in economic
conditions. During all this waste of time and effort, this building
and crumbling and rebuilding of protective walls around the labourer,
the causes of economic injustice continue their incessant operation,
producing continuously a new crop of effects which are like so many
windmills inviting attack by the Don Quixotes of reform.
Let us consider the effects of economic injustice on women, side by
side with the reformer’s work upon those effects. Women in industry
suffer, as I have shown, the injustice of inequality with men as
regards wages, opportunities, training, and tenure of employment.
The reformer attacks the problem of wages, and secures minimum-wage
laws based on some one’s theory of what constitutes a living wage.
No allowance is made for dependents because women, theoretically,
have none. The amount allowed may from the first be inadequate, even
for one person, or it may be rendered inadequate by a rise in the
cost of living. In either case, it is purely arbitrary, and bears no
relation whatever to the value of the worker’s services. Still, such
legislation might be better than nothing if there were nothing better
to be done. The reformer is less zealous in his attempt to provide
women with opportunities; his showing in this field is less impressive
than in that of wages. Still, he has done something. If he has not
been entirely responsible for the opening to women of many positions
in government service, he has at least greatly assisted in securing
them these opportunities. Farther than this, it must be admitted, it is
difficult for him to go. He might, indeed, exert himself to see that
women are provided by one means or another with equal opportunities to
get training, but he can do little to affect the policies of private
employers of labour, who can hardly be dictated to concerning whom they
shall hire and whom they shall retain. Nor can he prevent employers
from laying off women workers first when there is a slowing down in
production. In three, then, out of four of the disadvantages which
bear more heavily on women in industry than on men, the reformer, with
all his excellent intentions, is unable to be very helpful; while in
his zeal to safeguard the race, whose future appears to him to depend
entirely on the health of the female sex, he has multiplied their
disadvantages in the manner I have already described, without, however,
having made any noteworthy advance toward the accomplishment of his
purpose.
Now, had he chosen to inquire into the causes of the artificial
disabilities by which women workers are handicapped, he might have
discovered that these and the industrial hazards which cause him
such grave concern may be traced to the same fundamental source; and
that the just and only effective way of removing these disabilities
and hazards is to eradicate the source. Women in industry are the
victims of traditional prejudices: I have shown what those prejudices
are--the idea that woman’s place is the home, that women workers have
no dependents, that they work for pin-money and therefore do not
need a living wage, that upon them alone depends the future health
of the race. But as I remarked at the beginning of this chapter,
these prejudices could not be turned to the disadvantage of the woman
worker if it were not for the overcrowding of the labour-market. So
long as there are more people looking for work than there are jobs to
be had, the advantage in fixing terms and conditions of labour is on
the side of the employer. If men are obliged by their need to put up
with underpayment, women will be forced to accept an even worse rate;
if the tenure of men is uncertain, that of women will be even more
so. If the conditions of industry are hazardous, the alternative of
starvation will force the workers to risk injury or death unless the
employer be required by law to maintain the proper safeguards. Suppose,
however, that labour were scarce, that for every worker looking for
employment there were a dozen employers looking for workers. Under
such circumstances, the employer would be glad enough to hire the
worker who could fill his particular requirements, without regard to
sex, as employers did during the war when labour was scarce; and he
would pay the worker a wage determined not by theory or prejudice,
but by the amount of competition for the worker’s services. If the
employment he offered were hazardous, he would be obliged to maintain
proper safeguards in order to retain his employees, and in addition
would probably be forced to pay them a higher wage than they could earn
in some safer employment. If he did not do these things, his workers
would simply leave him for more satisfactory positions. Nor would he
be able to overwork his employees, for if he attempted to do so, some
rival employer would outbid him for their services by offering better
hours and easier conditions of labour. Thus the peculiar disabilities
of women workers would disappear with the disabilities of labourers
in general, and not a stroke of legislation would be required to make
industry both safe and profitable for the woman worker.
This condition is not unnatural or impossible. It is the present
condition of chronic unemployment, of expensive and ineffectual
“welfare” legislation, of wasteful and futile struggles between
organized capital and organized labour--it is this condition that is
entirely unnatural. I have mentioned its cause in Chapter III, and I
shall discuss it further in my next chapter. Upon its removal, and not
upon regulations which hamper the woman worker and reduce her to the
status of a function, the future of the race depends. The ancestors of
coming generations are men as well as women, and posterity will derive
its heritage of health from its ancestors of both sexes. Its prospect
of health will not be improved by legislation calculated to safeguard
the health of women workers, so long as the children they bear continue
to be exposed to an involuntary poverty which breeds ignorance,
imbecility, disease and crime. The happiness as well as the health
of future generations will depend in great measure upon the extent to
which both men and women can release themselves from the deteriorating
conditions of economic exploitation.
II
It is in business and in professional pursuits that the occupational
progress of women, and their emancipation from traditional prejudices,
are most marked. Although in the lower ranks of labour in these
pursuits there is a mass of women who, impelled by necessity,
work for low wages at mechanical tasks which offer no chance of
advancement, there is, nearer the top, a large group of women who
have been more fortunate in worldly position and education, and who
are spurred as much either by interest in their work or a desire to
be self-supporting, as by actual need to earn; who share, in other
words, the attitude that leads young men to strike out for themselves
even though their fathers may be able to support them. It is the woman
animated by these motives who is doing most for the advancement of her
sex; for it is she, and not the woman who works through necessity,
who really challenges the traditional prejudices concerning the proper
place of women. The woman labourer proves the _need_ of women to earn;
the business woman or professional woman who works because she wants to
work, is establishing the _right_ of women to earn. More than this, as
she makes her way into one after another of the occupations that have
been held to belong to men by prescriptive right, she is establishing
her claim, as a human being, to choose her work from the whole wide
field of human activity. It is owing to the attitude towards life
adopted by such women, to their preference of independence and action
over the dependence and passivity in vogue not so many years ago, that
it is coming to be quite the expected thing that young women of the
well-to-do classes shall set out to earn their living, as young men do,
instead of stopping under the parental roof, with a watchful eye out
for men who will marry and support them. Need I remark that nothing is
more likely than this new attitude to bring about the substitution of
the “union by affection” for the union by interest? The woman who is
economically independent is under much less temptation to marry from
economic motives than the woman for whom marriage represents the only
prospect of security.
There is still a goodly number of prejudices and discriminations to
be overcome before women in business and the professions shall stand
on an equal footing with men as regards opportunity and remuneration.
Except where she is in business for herself, the woman in these
pursuits must generally be content with a lower rate of pay than men;
and if observation may be taken to count for anything, she is expected
to work somewhat harder for what she gets--less loafing on the job is
tolerated in her than in the male employee. She is also more likely
to find herself pocketed; that is to say, in a position from which,
because of her sex, there is no possibility of further advance because
the higher positions are reserved for men. It is so universally the
rule that women must content themselves with reaching the lower rungs
of the occupational ladder, that the instances where they manage to
attain to places of responsibility and authority are still rare enough
to be found worthy of remark in the press. The same thing is true of
political positions; women are not yet represented in politics in
anything like a just proportion to their numbers, nor are they often
able to get themselves either elected or appointed to responsible
positions. None the less, considering the comparatively short time
since their emergence into the business world and the world of public
affairs, they are already making an excellent showing.
The world of business and the professions, like the world of industry,
has its occupations which are considered peculiarly suitable for women.
Strictly subordinate positions are thought to suit them very well;
hence there is quite an army of women stenographers, bookkeepers,
clerks and secretaries to be found in the business section of any
modern city. The personnel of the nursing profession is made up almost
exclusively of women; and the work of teaching in our public schools,
especially where it is most conspicuously underpaid, is largely in
their hands. There is, to be sure, an impression current among members
of school boards that marriage disqualifies a woman for the teaching
profession; but the single woman is fairly secure in her position,
possibly because it does not pay well enough to be very attractive
to men. Occupations connected with the arts are also held, in this
country, to be particularly well adapted for women, although it must
be noted that the prejudice of male musicians is effective enough to
exclude them from the personnel of our important orchestras. It is in
the creative arts that their work is most welcomed; more especially
in the field of literature; and this may seem strange, in view of the
fact that so many eminent authorities believe that their sex renders
them incapable of attaining any significance in creative work. It is,
I apprehend, rather to the low opinion in which aesthetic pursuits are
held in this country than to a high opinion of female ability, that
this peculiar condition must be ascribed.
But if certain occupations are considered peculiarly appropriate for
women, there is none the less a great deal of prejudice against them in
others. The idea that woman’s place is the home has no more disappeared
from the world of business and the professions than it has disappeared
from the world of industry, even though it is the business woman and
the professional woman who are doing most to dislodge it. And here it
may be well to remark a fact that has already been noted, with some
pointed comment, by Ethel Snowden, namely: that woman’s invasion of the
gainful occupations appears to be found unwomanly in proportion to the
importance of the position to which she aspires.
It is the married woman in business or in professional work, as it is
in industry, who suffers most from the surviving prejudices concerning
her sex. When there are economies to be effected through the discharge
of workers, the idea that the married woman is normally a dependent
comes immediately to the fore, and she is the first employee to be
discharged. For example, _Equal Rights_ of 8 August, 1925, noted in an
editorial that the city of St. Louis had begun a campaign for economy
by discharging twelve married women; that there was a movement on in
Germany to reduce governmental expenses by a wholesale discharge of
women employees; and that, according to rumour, Mr. Coolidge’s campaign
of economy was being made to bear most heavily on married women. The
comment of _Equal Rights_ on the action of the city of St. Louis is
worth quoting:
St. Louis employed twenty-seven married women. It investigated
the economic condition of all these, retained nine, discharged
twelve, and was, at last report, still considering the case of the
other six. St. Louis did not investigate the economic condition
of the men employees, to see whether or not these might continue
to live if they were discharged. St. Louis did not try to find out
whether or not these men had fathers, brothers, mothers, or wives
who might support them while they were looking for other jobs. St.
Louis assumed that men have a right to economic independence and
the increased happiness and opportunity that it brings. St. Louis
assumed that women have no such right.
In other words, St. Louis assumed, as the German and American
Governments apparently assume, and as most private employers assume,
that women are employed on sufferance; especially married women. Of
course it should be remembered that the position of the married woman
in this respect is only worse than that of single women, and that
the position of women is only worse than that of men; for, as I have
already remarked, under a monopolistic economic system the opportunity
to earn a living by one’s labour comes to be regarded as a privilege
instead of a natural right. Women are simply held to be less entitled
to this privilege than men.
That marriage should so often assume the nature of a disability
for the woman who either wishes or is obliged to earn, whereas it
often operates in favour of the male worker, may be attributed to
the traditional assumption that married women are dependent on, and
subject to, their husbands. I remarked in the preceding chapter that
the married woman who wishes to engage in business finds herself,
in many communities, hampered by legal disabilities arising from
her marital status, whereas her husband is under no corresponding
disabilities. Her position as an industrial and salaried worker is
rendered insecure if not by law, at least by the same psychology that
keeps legal disabilities in force. This psychology may be defined
as the expectation that a woman when she marries shall surrender a
much greater degree of personal freedom than the man she marries. The
man who does not object to his wife’s having a career is considered
generous and long-suffering. His insistence on her abandoning it and
contenting herself with looking out for his domestic comfort is thought
to be quite natural.[28] On the other hand, the woman who interferes
in any way with a husband’s career is regarded as an extremely selfish
person; while any sacrifice of herself and her ambitions to her husband
and his, is thought of merely as a matter of wifely duty. How often
does one hear that such and such a woman has given up her position
because “her husband didn’t want her to work.” There is, too, a very
general assumption that every married woman has children and should
stay at home and take care of them. Now, perhaps every married woman
should have children; perhaps in a future state of society men and
women will marry only when they wish to bring up a family. But at
present it is not so; therefore at present the assumption that a
married woman should stay at home and take care of her children leaves
out of account the fact that a large and increasing number of married
women are childless. It may be contended that these women should stay
at home and take care of their husbands; but even if we assume that the
unremitting personal attention of his wife is essential to the comfort
and happiness of a married man, there would still remain the question
of his title to this attention at the cost of her own interests.
We are dealing here with an attitude which, general though it be, has
been outmoded by the conditions of modern life. The sexual division
of interests and labour which has been insisted upon so long among
European peoples does not very well fit in with the organization
of industrial and social life in the twentieth century. Our social
ideology, like our political ideology, is of the eighteenth century;
and its especial effectiveness at present is by way of obscuring our
vision of the changed world that has emerged from the great economic
revolution of the last century. A division of interests and labour
which was convenient if not just under the conditions of economic
and social life which preceded the industrial revolution, is neither
convenient nor just under the conditions which prevail today. The care
of young children and the management of a household may result in an
unequal division of labour in families where the husband’s inability
to provide for the needs of his family forces the wife to assume the
burdens of a breadwinner. When one reads through the literature on
the question of hours of labour for women in industry, one is struck
by the persistent stressing of the married woman’s double burden of
breadwinning and housekeeping. These women, it seems, must not only
earn money to contribute to their families’ support, but they must,
before setting out for work and after returning from it, prepare the
family meals, get the children ready for school or the day-nursery,
take them there and call for them, wash, sew, and perform a hundred
other household tasks. This double burden is often made an argument for
establishing shorter hours of work for women in industry, but never for
expecting the husband to share the wife’s traditional burden as she has
been forced to share his. I have no doubt that innumerable husbands are
doing this; but there is no expectation put upon them to do it, and
those who do not are in no wise thought to shirk their duty to their
families, as their wives would be thought to do if they neglected to
perform the labour of the household.
Quite analogous to this attitude of the advocates of special
legislation for working women is that of the people who concern
themselves with the so-called problem of the educated woman, which
is supposed to be that of reconciling domesticity with intellectual
pursuits. A timely illustration of this attitude is the establishment
by Smith College of an institute for the “co-ordination of women’s
interests.” The purpose of this institute, in the words of President
Neilson, is “to find a solution of the problem which confronts
almost every educated woman today--how to reconcile a normal life
of marriage and motherhood with a life of intellectual activity,
professional or otherwise.” Here again is the tacit assumption that
marriage is the special concern of woman, and one whose claims must
take precedence over her other interests, whatever they may be; that
marriage and motherhood constitute her normal life, and her other
interests something extra-normal which must somehow be made to fit in
if possible. I have heard of no institute intended to find a way to
reconcile the normal life of marriage and fatherhood with a life of
intellectual activity, professional or otherwise; although when one
considers how many educated men of today are obliged to compromise with
their consciences in order to secure themselves in positions which
will enable them to provide for their families, one is persuaded that
some such institute might be at least equally appropriate and equally
helpful with that which Smith College has established.
Let us forget for a moment the sophisticated traditional attitude
toward this question of marriage and parenthood, and go back, as
it were, to the beginning--to a fact recognized in the animal world
and not entirely overlooked by primitive man, namely: that every
offspring has two parents who are equally responsible for its care and
protection. In the animal kingdom one finds a widely varied division
of the labour connected with the care of the young. For example, the
male of certain species is found to perform functions which our own
usage has led us to regard as maternal. Among the viviparous animals
the heavier share of responsibility rests with the female during
the gestation, birth and extreme youth of the offspring; and among
primitive human beings the actual physical dependence of the offspring
on the mother is likely to be prolonged over a period of several years.
It was, perhaps, this necessity of a close physical association between
mother and child that led to a sexual division of labour under which
the mother undertook the physical care of children while the father
undertook the task of providing food. It must be remarked, however,
that this division of labour by no means excludes productive labour on
the part of the woman. Among most tribes she augments the food-supply
through agriculture, grubbing, or sometimes through fishing or
hunting; and there are tribes, notably in Africa, where she is the sole
provider for the family. The Vaertings have remarked that the drudgery
connected with the care of children is invariably imposed by the
dominant upon the subject sex; a view which is in perfect consonance
with what we know of the general human willingness to transfer to other
shoulders the burden of uninteresting though necessary labour. Since
women have most often been subject, they have most often been forced to
undertake this drudgery, either in lieu of or in addition to the labour
of providing food and shelter for their families.
This is to say that their subject position has added considerably to
what newspaper editors and other commentators are fond of calling the
burden of Eve. Since woman is the childbearing sex, it has seemed
natural to a great many peoples to increase the disadvantage at
which her share in reproduction naturally places her, by making her
confinement at home permanent instead of occasional, and by permitting
her few, if any, interests save those connected with reproduction; in
short, by prolonging and enhancing her subjection to the demands of
the race. This is why the term married woman is still taken to imply
the term housekeeper; an implication which, as the _Freeman_ remarked
editorially some years ago, modern civilization must renounce “if
it wants such of its women as are editors and bank-presidents to be
mothers as well.”
Civilization shortens the period of the child’s physical dependence on
the mother by shortening the period of lactation. On the other hand, it
increases fecundity to such an extent that where religious superstition
or ignorance prevents the use of contraceptives, the burden of
childbearing is greatly increased. This result of civilization is
not, however, commonly found among the educated classes; and even
among those classes where children are most numerous, I have already
shown that women are not restrained by motherhood from engaging in
gainful occupations outside the home. On the contrary, the number of
their offspring is more often their chief incentive to this course.
Among well-to-do families, prepared foods and wet-nursing have for a
long time been rather generally employed to relieve mothers even of
the responsibility of lactation, while the custom of assigning the
physical care of children to hired substitutes has reduced their actual
work to that of bringing the child into the world. That this mode of
caring for children is approved by all classes is evident from their
readiness to adopt it when fortune favours them with an opportunity.
It is occasionally inveighed against by moralists, but on the whole it
is coveted and approved, especially while women devote to frivolous
pursuits the leisure that it leaves them. When a woman adopts this
mode in order to reconcile motherhood with a serious interest outside
the home, it is a different matter, and lays her open to the charge
of neglecting her family, though in fact she may spend no more hours
away from home than the woman who gives her morning to shopping and her
afternoon to playing bridge. Why this should be the case I am at a loss
to know, unless it be that a serious interest outside the home appears
to smack too much of an assertion of her right to live her life for her
own sake rather than for the sake of the race or that of her husband--a
self-assertion not readily to be accepted without such reservations
as find expression in institutes designed to “co-ordinate women’s
interests.”
It appears, then, that the care of the young is the concern of both
sexes, and is so recognized in the animal world and among human
beings; and that among the latter such differences in usage as
exist touching this matter are differences in the apportioning of
the burden. Even in our own day, when there is observable a tendency
to forget that the child has more than one parent--that parent being
the mother--the father’s claim to his children is still recognized
in law, often to the prejudice of the mother’s; and so, likewise, is
his obligation to provide for them. Indeed, the child may be said to
be regarded as exclusively the mother’s only while it is young; for
it is a general custom among us to speak of Mrs. So-and-So’s baby,
but of Mr. So-and-So’s son or daughter. Let us, then, recognize the
claim and interest of both parents. Let us also remember that the
economic organization has so extensively altered that the traditional
division of labour--this division is always profoundly affected by
consideration of the young--has been outmoded as far as thousands of
families are concerned. Let us also assume that woman has established
her right to be considered as a human being rather than a function or a
chattel. Then it must seem reasonable to assume that the co-ordination
of interests to be brought about concerns both sexes equally; that
the problem to be confronted is that of reconciling a normal life of
marriage and parenthood not only with the freest possible development
of intellectual interest but with the utmost devotion to any chosen
profession.
I can not pretend to foretell how this problem will be settled; for its
solution will depend upon the general solution of the labour-problem.
It may be that the necessary collectivism of modern industry will
result in a collectivist system of caring for children. Such a system
would by no means be an innovation; it would simply constitute an
extension and adaptation of means which already exist--of nurseries for
very small children and schools for older ones. Whatever its demerits
might be, such a system would certainly represent an enormous economy
of effort. The average home is adapted less to the needs of children
than to those of adults; hence a mother of young children must spend a
great deal of her time in preventing her young charges from injuring
themselves with dangerous household implements, from falling downstairs
or off of furniture too high for them, and from touching objects which
would not be safe in their hands. In a properly equipped nursery, on
the other hand, the furniture and all the objects are adapted to the
size and intelligence of the children. Children have the advantage of
numerous playmates; and one person can supervise the play of a dozen of
them with less fatigue than the mother of one is likely to feel at the
end of a day in the average home.
The Russians have already taken some steps in this direction by
establishing both nurseries and schools in connexion with certain
factories. From what I can gather of their policy, it would seem that
they regard the care and education of children as being very much
the concern of the whole community. They look upon childbearing as
a service to the community, but they do not appear to take the view
that women should be required to perform this service at the expense
of their independence, for they have instituted a system of subsidies
for pregnant and nursing working mothers, with rest-periods before and
after confinement, and a subsidy during confinement amounting to the
daily subsidy multiplied by fifteen.[29]
I have already indicated in the preceding chapter what it seems to me
would be the course of a free people in this matter of reconciling the
care of children with the greatest possible freedom for both parents.
It seems hardly necessary to call attention to the obvious fact that
the question is simply that of placing the care of the young in the
hands of those who are interested in it and fitted for it, instead
of forcing it willy-nilly upon either sex through a traditional
expectation and a traditional division of labour. In a free society,
those parents who wished to pursue careers incompatible with the actual
care of young children would avail themselves of the services of
substitutes, as the well-to-do classes do at present; and they might
do so with even greater confidence because, as I have remarked, those
engaged in caring for and teaching the young would do so as a matter of
interest primarily and only secondarily as a means of livelihood. There
is another important consideration to be taken into account, and that
is, that in a free society the problem of reconciling the occupations
of the parents with their personal supervision of their children would
be much easier to solve; for their hours of labour would be greatly
decreased. It is only where production must support an enormous amount
of idleness and waste that it is necessary to overwork producers.
It is possible, of course, that the institution of economic freedom
might check the present tendency of women to engage in gainful
occupations outside the home. It most certainly would if the vast
increase of opportunity which it offered were reserved exclusively
for men; but to bring about this result it would be necessary for
traditional anti-feminist prejudices to survive much more strongly
than they do today. The position of women has too radically changed to
admit of their exclusion from direct participation in the benefits of
economic freedom; therefore if they resigned the increased economic
opportunities that it offered them, and withdrew to the sphere of
domesticity, they would do so as a matter of choice. Why should we
not expect them to choose the exclusive domesticity which might be
rendered possible through the increased earning power of men? They
probably would, where it suited their taste to do so; but one of the
most powerful incentives to do so would no longer exist, namely: the
desire for economic security. Women, to be sure, are not exempt from
the characteristic willingness of humankind to live by the exertions
of others; but I would remark that there is this difference between the
person who does this indirectly, through legalized privilege, and the
person who depends directly on the bounty of another: that the former
is independent and the latter is dependent. Women are not strangers
to the human desire for freedom; and when the fear of want is allayed
they are quite likely to prefer an easy and secure self-support to the
alternative of economic dependence. Moreover, economic freedom would
set domesticity in competition with the interests of women rather than
their needs; for it would set all people free to engage in occupations
that interested them, whereas at present the vast majority do whatever
offers them a living. Under these circumstances it might reasonably be
expected that the number of women who would continue in business and in
industrial and professional pursuits, even after marriage and the birth
of children, would greatly increase.
Indeed, if we postulate an economic system under which every human
being would be free to choose his occupation in accordance with his
interests, I see no more reason to suppose that women would invariably
choose domesticity than to suppose that all men would choose
blacksmithing. Under such a régime I doubt that even the power of the
expected which affects them so strongly at present, would long continue
in an effectiveness which it has already begun to lose. Women, I think,
might be expected to choose their occupations with the same freedom
as men, and to look for no serious interruption from marriage and the
birth of children. There are a good many women at present who very ably
reconcile motherhood with a chosen career. I think we might expect to
find more of them rather than fewer, in a free society. One thing is
certain, and it is the important thing: they would be free to choose.
If it be woman’s nature, as some people still believe, to wish to live
at second hand, then in a free society they will freely make that
choice, and no one can complain of it--unless it be the men on whom
they elect to depend. However, to assume from past experience that they
do want to live at second hand is to assume that all the social and
legal injustices which have been employed to force them to do so, were
unnecessary; and when have Governments and communities wasted their
power in exercising compulsion where no compulsion was needed?
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Ellis: Man and Woman. 5th ed. p. 14.
[27] Katharine Anthony found the workmen of Germany frankly in favour
of any “protective” legislation that would hamper German working women
(“Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia”); and the Woman’s Party has
met with the same attitude among unions in this country. Among the
resolutions passed at the twenty-fifth convention of the International
Moulders’ Union of North America was the following: “_Resolved_, that
the decision of this convention be the restriction of the further
employment of child and woman labour in union core rooms and foundries,
and eventually the elimination of such labour in all foundries by
the example set by union foundries in the uplifting of humanity....
_Resolved_, that the incoming officers be directed to, either by
themselves or in co-operation with others in the labour movement, give
their best thought and effort in opposing the employment of female and
child labour in jobs recognized as men’s employment.”
[28] There are, of course, exceptions to this rule; as when a woman
has, before her marriage, already made a great reputation. In such a
case the husband would be thought selfish who demanded the sacrifice of
her career. But the husband who demands the sacrifice of a potential
career is generally thought to be well within his rights.
[29] From the Laws and Decrees of the Soviet Government on medical
questions, sanitation, etc., published in Moscow, 1922.