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
But, as we study this process of development, noting with admiration the
progressive changes in human relation, the new functions, the extended
structure, the increase of sensation in the socialized individuals with
its enormous possibilities of joy and healthful sensitiveness to pain,
we are struck by the visible presence of some counter-force, acting
against the normal development and producing most disadvantageous
effects. As in our orderly progress in social sex-development we are
checked by the tenacious hold of rudimentary impulses artificially
maintained by false conditions, so in our orderly progress in social
economic development we see the same peculiar survival of rudimentary
impulses, which should have been long since easily outgrown. It is no
longer of advantage to the individual to struggle for his own gain at
the expense of others: his gain now requires the co-ordinate efforts of
these others; yet he continues so to struggle.
In this lack of adjustment between the individual and the social
interest lies our economic trouble. An illustration of this may be seen
in the manufacture of prepared foods. This is a process impossible to
the individual singly, and of great advantage to the individual in
collective relation,—a perfectly natural economic process, advantageous
in proportion to the amount and quality of the food manufactured. This
we constantly find accompanied by a morbid process of dilution and
adulteration, by which society is injured, in order that the individual
concerned in the manufacture may be benefited. This is as though one of
the organs of the body—the liver, for instance—should deliberately
weaken or poison its quota of secretion, in order that by giving less it
might retain more, and become large and fat individually. An organ can
do so, does do so; but such action is morbid action, and constitutes
disease. The body is injured, weakened, destroyed, and so ultimately the
organ perishes also. It is a false conception of gain, and the falsehood
lies in not recognizing the true relation between individual and social
interests. This failure to recognize or, at least, to act up to a
recognition of social interests, owing to the disproportionate pressure
of individual interests, is the underlying cause of our economic
distress. As society is composed of individuals, we must look to them
for the action causing these morbid social processes; and, as
individuals act under the pressure of conditions, we must look to the
conditions affecting the individuals for the causes of their action.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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