The Future of the Women's MovementSwanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
General
The Future of the Women's Movement
Swanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
Women -- Social and moral questions; Women's rights
Her book will be read and digested by her fellow-workers. They are
quite certain to make it their own, for it is an armoury of facts and
arguments bearing on their work. It ought also to be studied by every
intelligent man and woman who perceives that the women’s movement is one
of the biggest things that has ever taken place in the history of the
world. Other movements towards freedom have aimed at raising the status
of a comparatively small group or class. But the women’s movement aims
at nothing less than raising the status of an entire sex—half the human
race—to lift it up to the freedom and valour of womanhood. It affects
more people than any former reform movement, for it spreads over the
whole world. It is more deep-seated, for it enters into the home and
modifies the personal character. No greater praise can be given to Mrs.
Swanwick’s book than to say that she treats of this great subject in a
manner worthy of it.
Her pages on militancy will be carefully studied. She is known to be
deeply antagonistic to violence in all its forms, and she gives the
reasons for the faith that is in her. It is also well known that she is
a leading member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies,
the chief of the non-militant suffrage organisations. But though she
criticises severely the Women’s Social and Political Union, she is not
among those who can see nothing but harm in their activities. Militant
suffragism is essentially revolutionary, and, like other revolutionary
agitations, has arisen from a want of harmony between economic and
educational status and political status. Educationally, socially, and
industrially women have made enormous advances during the last sixty
years. But the laws controlling their political status have stood still.
Similar conditions have invariably led to revolutionary outbursts except
where lawmakers have had the sense to recognise the situation in time and
adjust the political status of the group concerned to the changes which
had already taken place in its general condition. It is by making these
timely changes, and by grafting the bud of new ideas on the stem of old
institutions, that our countrymen have shown their practical political
instinct, and have, on the whole, saved the nation from the ruinous waste
of revolution. They have not yet shown this good sense about women. But
the signs of the times are full of hope that they may revert to type and
be wise in time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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