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
How is it possible for a man to assert that he knows what a woman feels
and wants as well as she herself? He would have to be more than man!
Even women, who spend their lives in studying men, do not make the
claim that they can feel a man’s passions as he can; and, in another
mood, the man who claims to be the arbiter of a woman’s life will rail
at her incomprehensible and fickle nature. “But women have tongues and
know only too well how to use them! We may consult with women and be
advised by them,” say the reactionaries. “Yes. And also you may not,”
is the reply. Professor Dicey makes much of the distinction between
civil, as distinct from political, rights. He speaks of reconciling
his “enthusiasm for everything which promotes the personal freedom and
education of women with the strenuous denial to them of any share in
sovereign power.” But the male electorate is not all so enlightened as
Professor Dicey, and civil rights depend upon political rights. Men
less intelligent, less sympathetic than Professor Dicey are absorbed in
their own affairs, and women have had to fight and are still having to
fight for every miserable concession in personal freedom and education
(and in such fights Professor Dicey has often been on the women’s side),
and they have no security that they will be allowed to hold what they
have won. Successive Local Government Acts have shown plainly how men
will almost unconsciously sweep away the rights of women when their
minds are concentrated on some reform for which men care. The Married
Women’s Property and the Custody of Children Acts repealed cruel and
unjust disabilities which had been imposed by men upon women. Are we to
suppose that all injustices are of the past, and that from henceforth for
evermore men will feel like women?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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