It is an instructive feature in the history of class conflict, and of
the movement for women's progress, that as women began by driving men
out of certain fields of labour, so now unmarried women try to force
married women from the labour market. In America, where everything goes
at full speed, an association has been founded among unmarried women
with this intention. These and similar phenomena belong to the system of
free competition, the creation of the "leading thought of our time, the
right of the individual to determine his own vocation." Perhaps when the
war of women against women becomes the rule, the women's rights women
will see that the problem of woman's work is more complicated than they
imagine. They have continued to look at it till now only from the point
of view of a woman's right to take care of herself. Perhaps they will
then understand that individualism, apart from the feeling of
solidarity, leads to social conflict, class against class, sex against
sex, unmarried against married, young against old. So it will be seen
that only in the transformation of the whole of society can woman attain
her full rights without impairing, through her advance, the rights of
others.
The sooner the women's rights party understands this, the better.
Instead of fighting protective legislation, they should advocate it;
instead of regarding unions and strikes with disfavour, they should help
labouring women to organise unions, and support strikes where strikes
are justified.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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