Women -- Employment -- United States; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women in politics -- United States
Thus we must some day have a Church, not composed exclusively of male
priests and women worshipers, not confined to rationalistic appeal nor
to ritualistic observance, but expressing the whole range of human
aspiration toward the unknown. Rational men and women of feeling must
combine with reverent men and intelligent women to create a belief and a
service which will express all the longings of humanity toward
perfection.
So in government, we must have a state which will be not only just but
merciful; which will concern itself not only with militant economics but
also with human well-being. If men are more capable in expressing the
katabolic needs of aggression and protection, women must furnish the
anabolic products of care and conservation. If women must help pay the
bills and nurse the wounded, they must first have a voice in determining
whether there shall be a war. Men and women must join their qualities in
building and caring for cities, and in shaping nations, where they can
both live their largest lives.
In education, we must devise institutions which will provide for the
special needs of women; and we must have the combined qualities of men
and women brought to bear on children of both sexes, and at all ages.
The foster parents of the nation's children must be both men and women.
The present attempt to exploit our twenty millions of boys and girls in
the interest of a sex will be a crime against humanity when we are
intelligent enough to see its real meaning.
The specialization going on in industry means infinite variety if we
look at the whole field of activity. Some parts of the world's work are
specially fitted for men; other parts to women. No intelligent division
of labor has been attempted in the period since all work was transformed
by our modern inventions. Possibly men should do most of the
dressmaking, and women should make men's clothing, but no intelligent
man or woman can doubt that most work falls naturally into the hands of
one sex or the other. Some day we shall know enough so that there will
be little or no industrial competition between men and women.
It is, however, in the family that both men and women must find their
deepest supplementary values. Sex antagonism can do much to impoverish
and ruin individual lives; but the monogamic and persistent union of
lovers, surrounded by their children, will easily survive all the
mistakes of a time of transition. In the meantime, those who would
uphold the finest family ideals of the past have less cause to fear the
militant agitator than they have to fear the idle, parasitic wife, who
relies on her legal rights to give her luxuries without labor, position
without leadership, and wifehood without the care and responsibility of
children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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