Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and MethodsHollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Science
Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods
Hollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Psychophysiology
The division of labor between the sexes, which has existed through historic
times and still persists, originated, so far as we know, in physiological,
not in psychological differences. The momentous physiological fact that
women bear and nourish infants and men do not, is the great primary sex
difference on which our economic and vocational organization has been built
up. It might be supposed that natural selection would have evolved an
intellectual (or unintellectual) type in women, which could find its
complete natural satisfaction in the vocation of child-bearing and
child-rearing. But such a selection could take place only if mental traits
were sex-limited in inheritance, or existed as secondary sex
characteristics. No mental trait has ever been proved to be sex-limited in
inheritance, or to exist as a secondary sex character. So far as we know,
daughters inherit mental traits from fathers as well as from mothers, and
sons inherit them from mothers as well as from fathers. Under such
circumstances the law of natural selection can never become operative to
solve the vocational problems of women.
The fact that women have not in the past equaled men in "philosophy,
science, art, invention and management" is frequently adduced as evidence
of their innate unfitness for pursuits other than the domestic. From such
evidence, however, we glean in reality no information whatever about the
vocational aptitudes of women. We should not expect any notable
achievement by women in the fields mentioned above, for the following
reasons. Women must bear and nourish infants, and men cannot. The period of
gestation and the period of infancy are very protracted in the human
species, together covering, for each infant reared, about six years. Until
very recently no scientific methods of controlling procreation have been
generally known or utilized. Thus women have borne great numbers of
infants, all their youth and maturity being consumed by bearing and rearing
young. The small minority of women whose lives happened not to be so
consumed would be very unlikely to make any contributions in extra-domestic
vocational achievement for two reasons. In the first place, all women were
expected to mate and thus to procreate and rear offspring, and no provision
was made by society for their training in lines other than those they would
be expected to use. In the second place, those women who did not meet the
common fate failed to do so for some special reason, such as ill health,
mental disease, or the necessity of caring for decrepit relatives. The very
causes of their celibacy would operate also against any vocational
achievement on their part.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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