The history of their relation to the arts of Healing is very similar. Other things being equal, as to some extent they were when the greater part of human life was included within the family circle, the psychic and emotional female development appears to make women more fitted than men to deal with preventive and remedial medicine. The explanation of this fact offers a fascinating field for speculation, but involves too wide a digression for discussion here, and in its support we will only point out the fact that in the old days, when no professional services were available, it was to the women of the family, rather than to the men, that the sick and wounded turned for medicine and healing. Yet in spite of this natural affinity for the care of suffering humanity, women were excluded from the sources of learning which were being slowly organised outside the family circle, and were thus unable to remain in professions for which they were so eminently suited.
The suspicion that the inferior position which women occupied in the teaching profession and their exclusion from the medical profession, was caused rather by the absence of educational opportunities than by a physiological incapacity for the practice of these arts, is strengthened by the remarkable history of Midwifery; which from being reserved exclusively for women and practised by them on a professional basis from time immemorial, passed in its more lucrative branches into the hands of men, when sources of instruction were opened to them which were closed to women. Just as the amateur woman teacher was less competent than the man who had made art or the learned languages his profession, so did the woman who treated her family and neighbours by rule of thumb, appear less skilful than the professional doctor, and the uneducated midwives brought their profession into disrepute. The exclusion of women from all the sources of specialised training was bound to re-act unfavourably upon their characters, because as family life depended more and more upon professional services for education and medical assistance, fewer opportunities were offered to women for exerting their faculties within the domestic sphere and the general incompetence of upper-class women did in fact become more pronounced.
Chapter VII
CONCLUSION
Great productive capacity of women under conditions of Family and Domestic Industry—no difference between efficiency of labour when applied for domestic purposes or for trade.
Rate of wages no guide to real value of goods produced—married women unlikely to work for wages when possessing capital for domestic industry—Women’s productiveness in textile industries—Agriculture—Other industries—Professional services.
Capitalism effected economic revolution in women’s position—By (a) substitution of individual for family wages—(b) employment of wage-earners on master’s premises—(c) rapid increase of master’s wealth.
Exclusion of women from skilled trades not originally due to sex jealousy—Women’s lack of specialised training due, (a) to its being unnecessary; (b) the desire to keep wife in subjection to husband—Reduction in the value to her family of woman’s productive capacity by substitution of wage-earning for domestic industry—Effect of her productive energy on her maternal functions and her social influence.
The preceding chapters have demonstrated the great productive capacity which women possessed when society was organised on the basis of Family and Domestic Industry. There was then no hard-and-fast line dividing domestic occupations from other branches of industry, and thus it has not been possible to discover how much of women’s labour was given to purposes of trade and how much was confined to the service of their families; but as labour was at this time equally productive, whether it was employed for domestic purposes or in Trade, it is not necessary to discriminate between these two classes of production in estimating the extent to which the community depended upon women’s services. The goods produced and the services rendered to their families by wives and daughters, must if they had been idle have employed labour otherwise available for Trade; or to put the position in another way, if the labour of women had been withdrawn from the domestic industries and applied to Trade, more goods would have been produced for the market, which goods the said women’s families would then have obtained by purchase; but while by this means the trade of the country would be greatly increased, unless the efficiency of women’s labour had been raised by its transference from domestic to other forms of industry, the wealth of the community would remain precisely the same.
Nevertheless, in estimating a country’s prosperity domestic production is generally overlooked, because, as the labour devoted to it receives no wages and its results do not enter the market, there is no mechanical standard for estimating its value. For similar reasons Home Trade is commonly considered to be of less importance than Foreign Trade, because, as the latter passes through the Customs, its money value can be much more readily computed, and because the man in the street, like King Midas, has imagined that gold is wealth. But we are here considering the production of goods and services, not of gold, and from this point of view, the woman who spins thread to clothe her family, and she who furnishes by her industry milk and cheese, eggs and pork, fruit and vegetables for the consumption of her family, has produced exactly the same goods, no more and no less, than if she had produced them for the market, and whether these goods are consumed by her own family or by strangers makes absolutely no difference to their real value.