Educated working women: Essays on the economic position of women workers in the middle classes

by Clara E. Collet

We may safely assert that no middle-class woman of average intelligence, educated in the high schools established during the last twenty-five years, is unable to earn a living if she chooses to do so. And one very important change has taken place. Whereas thirty years ago it was the rule for many parents, although with little hope of bequeathing an income to their daughters, to support them at home in expectation of their marriage, this lack of foresight is becoming rare. Our schools are no longer staffed by women who have begun their work in life driven to it by necessity or disappointment. More and more it is being recognised by parents that girls should be fitted to be self-supporting; and the tendency among the girls themselves is to concentrate their energies on the profession they take up, and to regard marriage as a possibility which may some day call them away from the path they are pursuing, but which should not be allowed to interfere with their plans in the meantime.

At the period of life, then, when there is the most opportunity of marriage there is now the least excuse for the woman who marries merely to obtain a livelihood. The economic advance has at least been sufficient to enable women to preserve their self-respect.

Next it must be admitted that the work which educated women are paid to do is in the main useful and satisfying work. They no longer think of supporting themselves by acting as useful companions to useless women; nor do they have to spend their time in imperfectly imparting valueless facts in the schoolroom. The teaching and nursing professions, which include more educated women in their ranks than any other, have made great advances. In both every worker who wishes to be efficient can make herself so, and while youth and health last those occupations are absorbing enough in themselves to be worth living for.

At the same time, the women who succeed in either of these callings must be above the average in ability. The merely average girl must turn to some occupation in which more people are wanted, but for which less exceptional skill is required. Generally she looks for it in one of two directions: she either becomes a clerk or some kind of domestic help. Failing marriage, the latter occupation offers chances, but not certainties, of making warm friends, and having abiding human interests. But clerical work in the case of the average woman can rarely be in itself satisfying; it is a means, not an end.

And here lies the great difference between men and women in the labour market. All that the average man demands is that his work should be honest and remunerative. It need not be interesting, or elevating, or heroic. Most women, on the other hand, who look forward to a long working career must have an occupation to which they can give both heart and mind. The reason is simple. The woman is living an isolated life; unless her work involves the exercise of what may be termed her maternal faculties, she is living an unnatural life. Men, on the other hand, whatever be their employment, are generally husbands and fathers. What they earn is of more importance than what they do.

In measuring women’s economic advance this need for a human interest in their work must never be forgotten. Of any occupation it must be asked, What does it offer to women when the novelty has worn off, and they realise that for twenty or thirty years more nearly all their time must be given to it?

Another fact, too, must be remembered—that although high pay may compensate for uninteresting work, a woman will never be worth high pay if the work does not interest her. And we find, therefore, the paradoxical result that, generally speaking, the women who earn the highest incomes are the women who have chosen their work for the work’s sake.

Taking these points into consideration, I am inclined to think that we have made sufficient economic progress to be “good, useful, healthy and self-respecting” up to the age of thirty. But the great mass of middle-class women, if fated to earn their living as middle-aged spinsters, would, I am afraid, be unable to earn an income sufficient to keep either their utility or their health up to the standard.

But optimists may fairly urge that the majority will not be called upon to go through this ordeal. The average woman marries; it is the exceptionally intellectual or the exceptionally feeble-minded who do not. The latter will be looked after by society, and the former can hold her own.

That is true to some extent. But while I think we have made great strides in the right direction, I think we have some serious truths to face. We are constantly congratulating ourselves that our middle-aged spinsters have nothing in common with the old maid of the past, while we assume that the next half-century will see a still greater exaltation of the maiden lady. I doubt it very much, unless much more thought and effort are given to making the duller girls industrially competent.