Women -- Economic conditions; Women -- Employment; Women -- Social and moral questions
intellectual vigour and strength which will enable us to undertake the
same share of mental which we have borne in the past in physical labours
of life. Are the rulers of the race to be no more its kings and queens,
but the mass of the peoples?--then we, one-half of the nations, demand
our full queens’ share in the duties and labours of government and
legislation. Slowly but determinately, as the old fields of labour close
up and are submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the new.
We make this demand, not for our own sakes alone, but for the succour of
the race.
A horseman, riding along on a dark night in an unknown land, may chance
to feel his horse start beneath him; rearing, it may almost hurl him to
the earth: in the darkness he may curse his beast, and believe its aim
is simply to cast him off, and free itself for ever of its burden.
But when the morning dawns and lights the hills and valleys he has
travelled, looking backward, he may perceive that the spot where his
beast reared, planting its feet into the earth, and where it refused to
move farther on the old road, was indeed the edge of a mighty precipice,
down which one step more would have precipitated both horse and rider.
And he may then see that it was an instinct wiser than his own which
lead his creature, though in the dark, to leap backward, seeking a
new path along which both might travel. (Is it not recorded that even
Balaam’s ass on which he rode saw the angel with flaming sword, but
Balaam saw it not?)
In the confusion and darkness of the present, it may well seem to
some, that woman, in her desire to seek for new paths of labour and
employment, is guided only by an irresponsible impulse; or that she
seeks selfishly only her own good, at the cost of that of the race,
which she has so long and faithfully borne onward. But, when a clearer
future shall have arisen and the obscuring mists of the present have
been dissipated, may it not then be clearly manifest that not for
herself alone, but for her entire race, has woman sought her new paths?
For let it be noted exactly what our position is, who today, as
women, are demanding new fields of labour and a reconstruction of our
relationship with life.
It is often said that the labour problem before the modern woman and
that before the unemployed or partially or almost uselessly employed
male, are absolutely identical; and that therefore, when the male labour
problem of our age solves itself, that of the woman will of necessity
have met its solution also.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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