Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social EvolutionGilman, Charlotte Perkins
General
Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Women -- Economic conditions; Women -- Employment; Women -- Social and moral questions
Men, women, and children need freedom to mingle on a human basis; and
that means to mingle in their daily lives and occupations, not to go
laboriously to see each other, with no common purpose. We all know the
pleasant acquaintance and deep friendship that springs up when people
are thrown together naturally, at school, at college, on shipboard, in
the cars, in a camping trip, in business. The social need of one another
rests at bottom on a common, functional development; and the common,
functional service is its natural opportunity.
The reason why friendship means more to men than to women, and why they
associate so much more easily and freely, is that they are further
developed in race-functions, and that they _work together_. In the
natural association of common effort and common relaxation is the true
opening for human companionship. Just to put a number of human beings in
the same room, to relate their bodies as to cubic space, does not relate
their souls. Our present methods of association, especially for women,
are most unsatisfactory. They arise, and go to “call” on one another.
They solemnly “return” these calls. They prepare much food, and invite
many people to come and eat it; or some dance, music, or entertainment
is made the temporary ground of union. But these people do not really
meet one another. They pass whole lifetimes in going through the steps
of these elaborate games, and never become acquainted. There is a
constant thirst among us for fuller and truer social intercourse; but
our social machinery provides no means for quenching it.
Men have satisfied this desire in large measure; but between women, or
between men and women, it is yet far from accomplishment. Men meet one
another freely in their work, while women work alone. But the difference
is sharpest in their play. “Girls don’t have any fun!” say boys,
scornfully; and they don’t have very much. What they do have must come,
like their bread and butter, on lines of sex. Some man must give them
what amusement they have, as he must give them everything else. Men have
filled the world with games and sports, from the noble contests of the
Olympic plain to the brain and body training sports of to-day, good,
bad, and indifferent. Through all the ages the men have played; and the
women have looked on, when they were asked. Even the amusing occupation
of seeing other people do things was denied them, unless they were
invited by the real participants. The “queen of the ball-room” is but a
wall-flower, unless she is asked to dance by the real king.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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