It may be affirmed, then, that women are more directly linked to
concrete life than men, and that they naturally incline to utilitarian
standards in judging the importance of things. Men create ideas, and
women make use of them: women create human beings, and men make use
of them: both men and women seize what they need for the service of
their own purposes. Is this difference discernible in the intellectual
work of educated women, in the subjects they deliberately choose
for research, and in the contributions they make to knowledge? This
question, and many others, remain to be answered; and, with them, the
fundamental question whether the education of women, and especially
their “higher education,” is planned to secure the development of
an enlightened womanhood, as distinct from manhood. The present
inquiry pretends to be nothing more than a stimulus to the further
investigation of essential differences between men and women; but it
is clear that if there is any truth in our conclusions, an honest
re-statement of women’s aims is necessary. The conception of womanhood
which has been adumbrated here, if it is accepted, demands so many
adjustments in the attitude of women towards themselves, towards
morality, religion, sex, and education that it is impossible within the
limits of this essay to give even a hint of them.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: _The Dominant Sex_, by Mathilde and Mathias Vaerting.
Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. (Geo. Allen & Unwin.)]
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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