The early promulgators of the Woman’s Movement, a century or more ago,
rightly regarded it as an extremely large and comprehensive movement
affecting the whole of life. They were anxious to secure for women
adequate opportunities for free human development, to the same extent
that men possess such opportunities, but they laid no special stress on
the abolition of any single disability or group of disabilities, whether
as regards education, occupation, marriage, property, or political
enfranchisement. They were people of wide and sound intelligence; they
never imagined that any single isolated reform would prove a cheap
panacea for all the evils they wished to correct; they looked for a slow
reform along the whole line. They held that such reform would enrich and
enlarge the entire field of human life, not for women only, but for the
human race generally. Such, indeed, is the spirit which still inspires
the wisest and most far-seeing champions of that Movement. It is only
necessary to mention Olive Schreiner’s _Woman and Labour_.
When, however, the era of actual practical reform began, it was obvious
that a certain amount of concentration became necessary. Education was,
reasonably enough, usually the first point for concentration, and
gradually, without any undue friction, the education of girls was, so
far as possible, raised to a level not so very different from that of
boys. This first great stage in the Woman’s Movement inevitably led on
to the second stage, which lay in a struggle, not this time always
without a certain amount of friction, to secure the entry of these now
educated women to avocations and professions previously monopolised by
the men who had alone been trained to fill them. This second stage is
now largely completed, and at the present time there are very few
vocations and professions in civilised lands, even in so conservative
and slowly moving a land as England, which women are not entitled to
exercise equally with men. Concomitantly with this movement,
however,—and beginning indeed, very much earlier, and altogether apart
from any conscious “movement” at all,—there was a tendency to change the
laws in a direction more favourable to women and their personal rights,
especially as regards marriage and property. These legal reforms were
effected by Parliaments of men, elected exclusively by men, and for the
most part they were effected without any very strong pressure from
women. It had, however, long been claimed that women themselves ought to
have some part in making the laws by which they are governed, and at
this stage, towards the middle of the last century, the demand for
women’s parliamentary suffrage began to be urgently raised. Here,
however, the difficulties naturally proved very much greater than they
were in the introduction of a higher level of education for women, or
even in the opening up to them of hitherto monopolised occupations. In
new countries, and sometimes in small old countries, these difficulties
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