Women -- Economic conditions; Women -- Employment; Women -- Social and moral questions
It is possible, that the human female, like the Jew, the male of that
type farthest removed from the dominant male type of the past, may in
the future find, that, so far from those qualities which, in an earlier
condition, lessened her social value and power of labour, continuing to
do so, they will increase it. That the delicacy of hand, lightness of
structure which were fatal when the dominant labour of life was to
wield a battle-axe or move a weight, may be no restraint but even an
assistance in the intellectual and more delicate mechanical fields of
labour; that the preponderance of nervous and cerebral over muscular
material, and the tendency towards preservative and creative activity
over pugilistic and destructive, so far from shutting her off from the
most important fields of human toil, may increase her fitness for them!
We have no certain proof that it is so at present; but, if woman’s
long years of servitude and physical subjection, and her experience as
child-bearer and protector of infancy, should, in any way, be found
in the future to have endowed her, as a kind of secondary sexual
characteristic, with any additional strength of social instinct,
with any exceptional width of human sympathy and any instinctive
comprehension; then, it is not merely possible, but certain, that, in
the ages that are coming, in which the labour of the human race will be
not mainly destructive but conservative, in which the building up and
developing of humanity, and not continually the inter-destruction of
part by part, will be the dominant activity of the race, that woman as
woman, and by right of that wherein she differs from the male, will have
an all-important part to play in the activity of the race.
The matter is one of curious and subtle interest, but what practically
concerns the human race is, not which of the two sexual halves which
must always coexist is best fitted to excel in certain human labours in
this or that direction, at this or that time, nor even which has most
to contribute to the sum-total of human activities; but it is this, that
every individual unit humanity contains, irrespective of race, sex, or
type, should find exactly that field of labour which may most contribute
to its development, happiness, and health, and in which its peculiar
faculties and gifts shall be most effectively and beneficially exerted
for its fellows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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