March, 1900.
The argument of Mrs. Stetson’s book, “Women and Economics,” may be briefly summed up as follows:—
(1) Man is the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food.
(2) The married woman’s living (i.e., food, clothing, ornaments, amusements, luxuries) bears no relation to her power to produce wealth, or to her services in the house, or to her motherhood.
(3) The woman gets her living by getting a husband. The man gets his wife by getting a living.
(4) Although marriage is a means of livelihood, it is not honest employment, where one can offer one’s labour without shame. To earn her living a woman must therefore make herself sexually attractive.
(5) The result of this is that, while men have been developing humanity, women have been developing femininity, to the great moral detriment of both men and women.
(6) The disastrous effects of this undue cultivation of sex differences can only be prevented by the wife being economically independent of her husband.
(7) This economic independence should be secured by the wife earning her living by performing paid work for some person or body other than her husband.
(8) The performance of maternal functions is not incompatible with the performance of such remunerative services outside the family.