The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

It is these wrongs that the mothers with the fathers of the race have to think out the way to alter. There is no one among us who is guiltless in this matter. Things that are continuously wrong need revolutionising, and not patching up.

What, then, is the real cause of the lowness of remuneration offered to women for work when compared with men? Thousands of women and girls receive wages that are insufficient to support life. They do not die, they live; but how? The answer is plain. Woman possesses a marketable value attached to her personality which man has not got. This enables her to live, if she has children, to feed them, and also not infrequently to support the man, forced out of work by the lowness of the wages she can accept. The woman's sex is a saleable thing. Prostitution is the door of escape freely opened to all women. It is because of the reserve fund thus established that their honest wages suffer. Not all sweated women are prostitutes. Many are legally married, they exist somehow; but the wages of all women are conditioned by this sexual resource. It can be readily seen that this is a survival of the patriarchal idea of the property value of woman. To-day it affords a striking example of the conflict between the old rights of men with the rising power of women. The value of woman is her sexual value; her value as a worker is as yet unrecognised, except as a secondary matter. You may refuse to be convinced of this. Yet the fact remains that our society is so organised that women are more highly paid and better treated as prostitutes than they are as honest workers.

I shall say no more on this question here, as I propose to deal with prostitution more fully in a later chapter. I would, however, point out that what I have said in no way implies an opinion that women should be driven out of the labour market. This is as unfair as that they should be driven into it. It is the conditions of labour that must be changed. I am not even able to accept the opinion that the strength of woman is necessarily less than that of man, only that it is different. It is, in fact, just this difference that is so important. If woman's capacity in work was the same as men's no great advantage could arise from women's entrance into the work of the State. It might well lead to even worse confusion. It is the special qualities that belong to woman that humanity is waiting for. Just as at the dawn of civilisation society was moulded and in great measure built up by women, then probably unconscious of their power and the end it made towards, so, in the future, our society will be carried on and humanised by women, deliberately working for the race, their creative energy having become self-conscious and organised in a final and fruitful period of civilisation.

I want to look a little further into this question of the strength of woman as compared with the strength of man. On the whole it seems right to say that the man is the more muscular type, and stronger in relation to isolated feats and spasmodic efforts. But against this may be placed the relative greater tenacity of life in women. They are longer lived, alike in infancy and in old age; they also show a greater power of resisting death. The difference in the incidence of disease, again, in the two sexes is far from furnishing conclusive evidence as to the greater feebleness of women. Their constitution seems to have staying powers greater than the man's. The theory that women are "natural invalids" cannot be accepted. Every care must be taken to guard against any misdifferentiation of function in the kind of work women are to do, but there is no evidence to prove that healthy work is less beneficial to women than to men. Indeed, all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Even in the matter of muscular power it is difficult to make any absolute statement. The muscular development of women among primitive peoples is well known. Japanese women will coal a vessel with a rapidity unsurpassable by men. The pit-brow women of the Lancashire collieries are said to be of finer physical development than any other class of women workers. I have seen the women of Northern Spain perform feats of strength that seem extraordinary.

It is worth while to wait to consider these Spanish women, who are well known to me. The industrial side of primitive culture has always belonged to women, and in Galicia, the north-west province of Spain, the old custom is still in active practice, owing to the widespread emigration of the men. The farms are worked by women, the ox-carts are driven by women, the seed is sown and reaped by women—indeed, all work is done by women. What is important is that these women have benefited by this enforced engaging in activities which in most countries have been absorbed by men. The fine physical qualities of these workers can scarcely be questioned. I have taken pains to gain all possible information on this subject. Statistics are not available, because in Galicia they have not been kept from this point of view. I find, however, that it is the opinion of many eminent doctors and the most thoughtful men of the province, that this labour does not damage the health or beauty of the women, but the contrary, nor does it prejudice the life and health of their children. As workers they are most conscientious and intelligent, apt to learn, and ready to adopt improvements. From my personal observations I can bear witness that their children are universally well cared for. What impressed me was that these women looked happy. They are full of energy and vigour, even to an advanced age. They are evidently happy, and the standard of beauty among them will compare favourably with the women of any other nation. I once witnessed an interesting episode during a motor-ride in the country. A robust and comely Gallegan woman was riding a ancas (pillion fashion) with a young caballero, probably her son. The passing of our motor-car frightened the steed, with the result that both riders were unhorsed. Neither was hurt, but it was the woman who pursued the runaway horse. She caught it without assistance and with surprising skill. What happened to the man I cannot say. When I saw him he was standing in the road brushing the dust from his clothes. I presume the woman returned with the horse to fetch him.

Women were the world's primitive carriers. In Galicia I have seen women bearing immense burdens, unloading boats, acting as porters and firemen, and removing household furniture. I saw one woman with a chest of drawers easily poised upon her head, another woman bore a coffin, while another, who was old, carried a small bedstead. A beautiful woman porter in one village carried our heavy luggage, running with it on bare feet, without sign of effort. She was the mother of four children, and her husband was at the late Cuban war. She was upright as a young pine, with the shapeliness that comes from perfect bodily equipoise. I do not wish to judge from trivial incidents, but I saw in the Gallegan women a strength and a beauty that has become rare among women to-day. I recall a conversation with an Englishman I met at La Coruña, of the not uncommon strongly patriotic and censorious type. We were walking together on the quay; he pointed to a group of the Gallegan burden-bearers, who were unloading a vessel, remarking in his indiscriminate British gallantry, "I can't bear to see women doing work that ought to be done by men." "Look at the women!" was the answer I made him.

It is, of course, impossible to compare the industrial conditions of such a country as Spain with England. We may associate the position of women in Galicia with some of the old matriarchal conditions. Women are held in honour. There is a proverb common over all Northern Spain to the effect that he who is unfortunate and needs assistance should "seek his Gallegan mother." Many primitive customs survive, and one of the most interesting is that by which the eldest daughter in some districts takes precedence over the sons in inheritance. In no country does less stigma fall upon a child born out of wedlock. As far back as the fourth century Spanish women insisted on retaining their own names after marriage. We find the Synod of Elvira trying to limit this freedom. The practice is still common for the children to use the name of the mother coupled with that of the father, and in some cases, alone, showing the absence of preference for the paternal descent.[318] The introduction of modern institutions, and especially the empty forms of chivalry, has lowered the position of women. Yet there can be no question that some feature of the ancient mother-right customs have left the imprint on the domestic life of the people. Spanish women have, in certain directions, preserved a freedom and privilege which in England has never been established and is only now being claimed.[319]

How completely all difficulties vanish from the relationship of the sexes where society is more sanely organised—with a wiser understanding of the things that really matter. The question is not: are our women fit for labour? but this: are the conditions of labour in England fit either for women or men? The supply of cheap labour on which the whole fabric of our society is built up is giving way—and it has to go. We have to plan out new and more tolerable conditions for the workers in every sort of employment. But first we have to organise the difficult period of transition from the present disorder.

I will not dwell on this. I would, however, point out that women must be trained and ready to take their part with men in this work of industrial re-organisation. They are even more deeply concerned than men. The conditions of under-payment for woman's work are not restricted to sweated workers; it is the same in skilled work, and in all trades and professions that are open to women. For exactly the same work a lower rate of payment is offered. Female labour is cheap, just as slave labour is cheap, the woman is not considered as belonging to herself.

There is no question here of the real value of woman's labour. The cry of man to woman under the patriarchal system has always been, and still for the most part is, "Your value in our eyes is your sexuality, for your work we care not." But mark this! The penalty of this false adjustment has fallen upon men. For women, in their turn, have come to value men first in their capacity as providers for them, caring as little for the man's sex-value as men care for woman's work-value. From the moment when woman had to place the economic considerations in love first, her faculties of discrimination were no more of service for the selection of the fittest man. Here we may find the explanation of the kind of men girls have been willing to marry—old men, the unfit fathers, the diseased. Yes, any man who was able to do for them what they have not been allowed to do for themselves. And it is the race that suffers and rots; the sins of the mother must be visited on the child.