Women -- Employment -- Great Britain; Women labor union members -- Great Britain; Working class women -- Great Britain
The moral of the whole story is by no means that unrestricted freedom of
employment for women is the way of salvation. Rather is it that women must
not only organise but must take a conscious part in the work of directing
their organisation. At present they are too often the shuttlecock between
the opposing interests of the employer and the men's Union. It is not that
the Trade Union is always wrong in wanting to keep the women out; or that
the employer (whether capitalist or operative) is always right in wanting
to take the women on. The point is that each party in these disputes is
usually influenced mainly by his own interests and easily persuades
himself that what is best for him is best also for the woman-worker
concerned. The hardest and most unhealthy work may be done by women
without a protest from men's Unions if it does not bring women evidently
into competition with men. Nothing can clear up the situation but the
enlightenment and better organisation of women themselves. They must learn
not to take their cue implicitly from the employer or from the men's
Union--certainly not from the teaching of women of another class. They
must learn--they are fast learning--to think for themselves and to see
their needs in relation to society as a whole, to become articulate and
take part in the control of their organisation. It is quite likely that
when they do so they will not adopt the ideal of complete freedom of
competition.
I remember some years ago hearing a lecture on the subject of the mining
industry given to a society of women of advanced views, the lecturer, a
professional woman, taking the line that women should not have been
excluded from work underground in mines, as they were by the Act of 1842,
and that the evils of such work had been exaggerated. Some little time
afterwards an experienced woman cotton-operative was invited to address
the same society, and incidentally remarked in the course of her lecture
that card-room work was "not fit for women to do." The contrast was
instructive, especially taking into consideration that card-room work in
the twentieth century, whatever its objections, cannot be nearly as
dangerous and injurious as underground work in mines was in 1842.
Legislative exclusion of women from dangerous and unhealthy occupations,
is, we may admit, an undesirable remedy from many points of
view--especially perhaps because it affords too easy relief to the
conscience of the employer, who may take refuge in the idea that he need
not trouble to improve conditions if he employs only men. It is better to
make the conditions of industry fit for women than to drive women out of
industry; better to strengthen the organisation of women and give them a
voice in deciding what processes are or are not suitable to them than to
increase the competition for home work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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