Women -- Economic conditions; Women -- Employment; Women -- Social and moral questions
Yet it may be, that, with the smaller general bulk and the muscular
fineness, and the preponderance of brain and nervous system in net bulk
over the fleshy and osseous parts of the organism, which generally,
though by no means always, characterises the female as distinguished
from the male of the human species, there do go mental qualities which
will peculiarly fit her for the labours of the future. It may be, that
her lesser possession of the mere muscular and osseous strength, which
were the elements of primary importance and which gave dominance in one
stage of human growth, and which placed woman at a social disadvantage
as compared with her companion, will, under new conditions of life, in
which the value of crude mechanical strength as distinguished from high
vitality and strong nervous activity is passing away, prove as largely
to her advantage, as his muscular bulk and strength in the past proved
to the male. It is quite possible, in the new world which is arising
about us, that the type of human most useful to society and best fitted
for its future conditions, and who will excel in the most numerous forms
of activity, will be, not merely the muscularly powerful and bulky, but
the highly versatile, active, vital, adaptive, sensitive, physically
fine-drawn type; and, as that type, though, like the muscularly heavy
and powerful, by no means peculiar to and confined to one sex, is yet
rather more commonly found in conjunction with a female organism, it is
quite possible that, taken in the bulk and on the whole, the female half
of humanity may, by virtue of its structural adaptions, be found most
fitted for the bulk of human labours in the future!
As with individuals and races, so also with sexes, changed social
conditions may render exactly those subtile qualities, which in one
social state were a disadvantage, of the highest social advantage in
another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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