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
In general, under social law, men develope right action; but some hidden
spring seems to force them continually into wrong action. We have our
hand upon this hidden spring in the sexuo-economic relation. If we had
remained on an individual economic basis, the evil influence would have
had far less ill effect; but, as we grow into the social economic
relation, it increases with our civilization. The sex-relation is
primarily and finally individual. It is a physical relation between
individual bodies; and, while it may also extend to a psychical relation
between individual souls, it does not become a social relation, though
it does change its personal development to suit social needs.
In all its processes, to all its results, the sex-relation is personal,
working through individuals upon individuals, and developing individual
traits and characteristics, to the great advantage of society. The
qualities developed by social relation are built into the race through
the sex-relation, but the sex-relation itself is wholly personal. Our
economic relation, on the contrary, though originally individual,
becomes through social evolution increasingly collective. By combining
the human sex-relation with the human economic relation, we have
combined a permanently individual process with a progressively
collective one. This involves a strain on both, which increases in
direct proportion to our socialization, and, so far, has resulted in the
ultimate destruction of the social organism acted upon by such
irreconcilable forces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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