In keeping with their views, this element demands that, to unmarried
woman, at least, all fields of work, for which her strength and
faculties are adequate, shall be opened, to the end that she may enter
the competitive field for work with man. A small set goes even further,
and demands that competition for work be not limited to the field of the
lower occupations, but should also extend higher, to the professions, to
the field of art and science. This set demands the admission of woman to
all the higher institutions of learning, namely, the universities, which
in many countries are still closed to her. Their admission is advocated
to the classes of several branches of study, to the medical profession,
to the civil service (the Post Office, telegraph and railroad offices),
for which they consider women peculiarly adapted;, and they point to the
practical results that have been attained, especially in the United
States, through the employment of woman. The one and the other also make
the demand that political rights be conferred upon woman. Woman, they
admit, is human and a member of the State, as well as man: legislation,
until now in the exclusive control of man, proves that he exploited the
privilege to his own exclusive benefit, and kept woman in every respect
under guardianship, a thing to be henceforth prevented.
It is noteworthy that the efforts here roughly sketched, do not reach
beyond the frame-work of the existing social order. The question never
is put whether, these objects being attained, any real and thoroughgoing
improvement in the condition of woman will have been achieved. Standing
on the ground of bourgeois, that is, of the capitalist social order, the
full social equality of man and woman is considered the solution of the
question. These folks are not aware, or they slide over the fact that,
in so far as the unrestricted admission of woman to the industrial
occupations is concerned, the object has already been actually attained,
and it meets with the strongest support on the part of the ruling class,
who as will be shown further on, find therein their own interest. Under
existing conditions, the admission of women to all industrial
occupations can have for its only effect that the competitive struggle
of the working people become ever sharper, and rage ever mere fiercely.
Hence the inevitable result,--the lowering of incomes for female and
male labor, whether this income be in the form of wage or salary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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