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
The economic independence of woman will change all these conditions as
naturally and inevitably as her dependence has introduced them. In her
specialization in industry, she will develope more personality and less
sexuality; and this will lower the pressure on this one relation in both
women and men. And, in our social intercourse, the new character and new
method of living will allow of broad and beautiful developments in human
association. As the private home becomes a private home indeed, and no
longer the woman’s social and industrial horizon; as the workshops of
the world—woman’s sphere as well as man’s—become homelike and beautiful
under her influence; and as men and women move freely together in the
exercise of common racial functions,—we shall have new channels for the
flow of human life.
We shall not move from the isolated home to the sordid shop and back
again, in a world torn and dissevered by the selfish production of one
sex and the selfish consumption of the other; but we shall live in a
world of men and women humanly related, as well as sexually related,
working together, as they were meant to do, for the common good of all.
The home will be no longer an economic entity, with its cumbrous
industrial machinery huddled vulgarly behind it, but a peaceful and
permanent expression of personal life as withdrawn from social contact;
and that social contact will be provided for by the many common
meeting-places necessitated by the organization of domestic industries.
The assembling-room is as deep a need of human life as the
retiring-room,—not some ball-room or theatre, to which one must be
invited of set purpose, but great common libraries and parlors, baths
and gymnasia, work-rooms and play-rooms, to which both sexes have the
same access for the same needs, and where they may mingle freely in
common human expression. The kind of buildings essential to the carrying
out of the organization of home industry will provide such places. There
will be the separate rooms for individuals and the separate houses for
families; but there will be, also, the common rooms for all. These must
include a place for the children, planned and built for the happy
occupancy of many children for many years,—a home such as no children
have ever had. This, as well as rooms everywhere for young people and
old people, in which they can be together as naturally as they can be
alone, without effort, question, or remark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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