Educated working women: Essays on the economic position of women workers in the middle classesCollet, Clara E. (Clara Elizabeth)
History
Educated working women: Essays on the economic position of women workers in the middle classes
Collet, Clara E. (Clara Elizabeth)
Women -- Education; Women -- Employment
No one can study the organisation of industry at the present time
without noticing that there is great room for improvement. Good
organisers are extremely rare; and even in the internal management of
a factory, perhaps the least important part of the work of a great
manufacturer, much could be done which is rarely done at present.
The admittance of educated women to a share in factory management
should really be regarded in the light of co-operation with men, not
competition with them. A man and a woman looking at a work-room are
struck by different features, and each can be suggestive to the other.
This is especially the case wherever women are employed.
The question of capacity is a more difficult one for me to answer,
but an easier one for the individual girl, if she is not afraid
of ridicule. And it is at this point that I would reiterate Mrs.
Browning’s advice. To any really clever girl who asked me for advice as
to her future work I should say, “What do you think you could do best
if it were possible for you to do it? Whatever that is, do your very
best to get training in it, to show by capacity at one stage that you
could master the next if you had the chance. If you do this, you will
find that the men who laughed at women for thinking of doing such work
will frequently be the very ones to make an exception in your favour
and to help you over the next difficulty. If you wish to be a farmer,
and to study every department of your work and be thoroughly grounded
in agricultural science, make the best of your opportunities where
you are, attend classes if possible in the technological department
of a good college; and if the agricultural colleges are closed to
women, when you have done everything you can without them, get one of
them to make an exception in your favour. Whatever it may be that you
wish to do, prepare yourself for it, and, instead of bemoaning the
ill-treatment of women in general, persuade those in authority of your
fitness in particular. And when you have gained your end help every
girl you can who shows similar capacities.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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