The case is, therefore, that while those who urge the incompetence of woman have not a shred of evidence to rely upon—beyond the ridiculous and futile practice of referring us to some woman or group of women they have met—those who believe in her competence have an immense and increasing body of experience, besides the plain probabilities of the situation. We have opened a hundred doors to women, and have discovered a hundred aptitudes that men had not suspected. Communities amounting in the aggregate to eleven or twelve million souls have admitted women to the parliamentary franchise, and the result has been admirable. Larger countries, including England, have admitted women to a share in other branches of public life (local government), and no evils have been reported. To say that our women are not competent to take the further step of choosing once in five or seven years which party should be returned to power, which of two candidates they prefer as their representative, is either a piece of wanton cynicism or an insincere cloak for an obstinate prejudice. And for those who view with complacency the enlisting of thousands of women in the service of political parties, and their active employment in electoral battles, the position is intolerable.
The suggestion of Plato, of the Stoics, of medieval thinkers like Agrippa, and of so many more recent observers, that the chief mental difference between the sexes is a difference in education and experience, has been borne out by the whole experience of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The medieval world regarded the Jew with infantine wonder, and its theologians speculated learnedly on his aloofness, his distrust, his narrow capacities, and so forth. Luther broke in on their sophistry with the sensible remark that if you treat a man as a dog he may be forced to act as one. The freedom we have given to the Jew has brought out his essential humanity and capacity. We may apply the parable to the position of woman. She has been treated, politically, as a child. The moment we begin to abandon that treatment we find the maturity of her power.
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When, in 1866 and 1867, Lord Elcho, Lord Sherbrooke, and the “Adullamite” Whigs made public reflections on the political capacity of the hundreds of thousands of working men whom Gladstone proposed to enfranchise, and Disraeli did enfranchise, the working men retorted with a violence and disorder that one may regard as not unnatural. To-day the sons of these enfranchised workers make less polite reflections on the capacity of women, and are shocked at the “hysteria” that sometimes ensues. For my part, I have felt it unpleasant to have to discuss the question whether the prospective women electors of Britain are mentally inferior to the male electors. My apology must be that not only have I found the belief of their inferiority to lie at the root of most of the prejudices against the movement, but that, if their competence be granted, the argument is over. Hundreds of thousands of obviously competent women demand the vote to-day. No matter how many more thousands may not, we maintain an offensive medieval injustice when we continue to refuse it to those who do.
But a last word may be devoted to those women and men who think the granting of the vote would injure woman, and, indirectly, the community. It is, unfortunately, very difficult to grasp the precise fear that finds expression in this objection. The frequent statement that woman’s “refined” and “angelic” nature should not be “dragged into politics” is usually a piece of insincere flippancy both as regards woman and politics. At the most, if political life were so corrupt, one would think the introduction of “angels” would greatly benefit it. But it is difficult to see, however prone one may be to pessimism, that the reading of a political journal every day, an occasional attendance at a political meeting, or membership of a political club, would greatly sully woman’s high nature. The moment you reflect what the exercise of the vote really involves in the concrete, a great many rhetorical balloons collapse.
The same point holds in regard to the objection that admission to the franchise will distract woman from her domestic duties. It has even been gravely suggested that it might affect maternity. It is very difficult to treat such statements seriously. Vast numbers of women do not marry, vast numbers have no children, or only one or two, and a large number relegate the work to servants. But what makes it really difficult to meet the point seriously is: (1) The ridiculously slender amount of work the exercise of the vote will put on women; (2) the light-heartedness with which women were employed by political parties before they asked for the vote; and (3) the enormous amount of interest, distraction, and employment outside the home that we already willingly grant our women. The higher education of women is undoubtedly affecting maternity.[15] Does anyone propose to abolish it? The rush of life among the wealthy is even more exacting. The middle class, and even the working women, have corresponding distractions. Beside these the exercise of the suffrage is a sheer trifle, in relation to strain on the system.
Of the apprehended discord in families, which influenced even Professor Sidgwick, one can only say that the proposal to perpetuate a monstrous and offensive injustice on the ground of an imaginary evil of that character is astounding. I do not happen to know any such families, in a fairly extensive acquaintance, but I should fancy that they will not wait for politics to spread discord in them. The apprehension seems to be based on a very cynical estimate of the relations of married folk, or in the notion that they have always agreed on religion, on dress, on local affairs, or in their estimates of people. But as one half of the opponents of the enfranchisement of wives plead that the wife would be sure to vote as her husband does, and therefore needs no separate representation, while the other half of our opponents declare the opposite and apprehend widespread discord, one may leave them to reconcile their contradictory experiences.
High above all these trivial and inflated fancies one fact is clear. The admission of women to public life would give them a wider horizon and more balanced judgment. Men are growing more feminine in every century. A medieval man would gaze with astonishment at the growth of feminine qualities in the modern world—sympathy with suffering, refinement, even tenderness. Women are growing more masculine on the intellectual side. There is no such thing as a fixed and immutable type of organism. The sexes are approaching, after æons of separation, and the tendency is good. Politics is not a game—or should not be—but a concentration of the best intelligence and feeling of the nation upon the gravest issues of national life. Through every serious Parliament of the world some breath has passed of the new spirit, the determination to uplift the race, assuage suffering, mitigate poverty, and do battle with old evils. No finer thing can happen to woman than that she be enlisted, actively and responsibly, in that great crusade.
[The End]