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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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