Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution — John Shaqi
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
There seems to have come a time when it occurred to the dawning
intelligence of this amiable savage that it was cheaper and easier to
fight a little female, and have it done with, than to fight a big male
every time. So he instituted the custom of enslaving the female; and
she, losing freedom, could no longer get her own food nor that of her
young. The mother ape, with her maternal function well fulfilled, flees
leaping through the forest,—plucks her fruit and nuts, keeps up with the
movement of the tribe, her young one on her back or held in one strong
arm. But the mother woman, enslaved, could not do this. Then man, the
father, found that slavery had its obligations: he must care for what he
forbade to care for itself, else it died on his hands. So he slowly and
reluctantly shouldered the duties of his new position. He began to feed
her, and not only that, but to express in his own person the thwarted
uses of maternity: he had to feed the children, too. It seems a simple
arrangement. When we have thought of it at all, we have thought of it
with admiration. The naturalist defends it on the ground of advantage to
the species through the freeing of the mother from all other cares and
confining her unreservedly to the duties of maternity. The poet and
novelist, the painter and sculptor, the priest and teacher, have all
extolled this lovely relation. It remains for the sociologist, from a
biological point of view, to note its effects on the constitution of the
human race, both in the individual and in society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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