Therefore, even in science, "the struggle for existence" is the dominant law—to the male mind, with the "survival of the fittest" and "the elimination of the unfit."
Therefore in industry and economics we find always and everywhere the antagonist; the necessity for somebody or something to be overcome—else why make an effort? If you have not the incentive of reward, or the incentive of combat, why work? "Competition is the life of trade."
Thus the Economic Man.
But how about the Economic Woman?
To the androcentric mind she does not exist. Women are females, and that's all; their working abilities are limited to personal service.
That it would be possible to develop industry to far greater heights, and to find in social economics a simple and beneficial process for the promotion of human life and prosperity, under any other impulse than these two, Desire and Combat, is hard indeed to recognize—for the "male mind."
So absolutely interwoven are our existing concepts of maleness and humanness, so sure are we that men are people and women only females, that the claim of equal weight and dignity in human affairs of the feminine instincts and methods is scouted as absurd. We find existing industry almost wholly in male hands; find it done as men do it; assume that that is the way it must be done.
When women suggest that it could be done differently, their proposal is waved aside—they are "only women"—their ideas are "womanish."
Agreed. So are men "only men," their ideas are "mannish"; and of the two the women are more vitally human than the men.
The female is the race-type—the man the variant.