Woman in Political Evolution

by Joseph McCabe

Among the Esquimaux, finally, her position is generally fair. Polygamy and polyandry are practised, and there is no marriage ceremony. But the men generally consult their wives in regard to bargains, and in many tribes allow her to rule the home. Among the eastern Esquimaux the women often disdain marriage and support themselves.

From this general survey we may draw a few inferences in regard to the evolution of woman’s position. We must not look for a uniform development in all parts of the human race. Different circumstances would put a different economic and personal value on women, and this would necessarily affect the behaviour of the men. We seem, however, quite safe in tracing the general development. Where tribes approach nearest to the primitive family, and there is no communal organisation, the man and woman are nearest equality. Her maternal office naturally defines her sphere. The care of children keeps her in or near the home, and the industries that arise in or about it (agriculture, weaving, etc.) fall to her. The man, like the male animal, must wander afield to forage, hunt, and fight.

In the course of time the family expands into the clan and tribe. The division of labour continues in regard to the home, but there are now interests of the community as such to be considered, and on these the welfare of all may depend. It is generally true that this elementary political life fell naturally to the men. The issues were predominantly questions of war or migration, and they came within the men’s sphere of work. And when the republican council gives way to the rule of chief or prince, the government remains essentially masculine. The ruler must be, above all, a warrior. Here and there the women may force or cajole their way into the council, or receive the flattery of consultation; but the work to be discussed is predominantly men’s work. Where a woman develops the ferocity of the man, as among the Red Indians and (to some extent) the Ethiopians, or where war is all but unknown (as among the Esquimaux), it is natural for her to be consulted. Where she is entrusted with the agriculture, as an occupation about the home, she may have influence as co-producer; though this is not a general rule. But the cases in which she shares the primitive political power as a right are insignificant in number, and in the vast majority of tribes she has no influence on it. Her exclusion implies no conscious despotism or injustice. It is merely that the enterprises to come before the tribal council are almost entirely enterprises that the men must carry out; and the formal councils have grown insensibly out of informal consultations about their work among the men, in which she would naturally have no part.

Hence it is that when nations come into the light of history we generally find the political power in the hands of the men, and the women subject to laws they have not made and authority they have not chosen. Religion—a male priesthood—lends its sanction to the ancient usage, and the very remoteness and obscurity of its origin invest it with authority. Men learn to enjoy the monopoly of power, and use their strength to maintain it. The primitive equality of the sexes disappears. If for ages men select the more submissive mates and discard the more self-assertive, the character of woman will be slowly modified, and the sexes will diverge more and more. And thus, as Chinese, Hindoos, Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Teutons advance into the light of history, we find the familiar types of the gentle, industrious, submissive wife and the aggressive, adventurous, masterful husband. The woman may be respected, may even be consulted, but the home is her realm and the state her husband’s.

CHAPTER III.
WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ASSYRIA

It may seem strange that, if this has been the general course of development, the first civilised nation to which we turn does not bear the features that it would lead us to expect. Egypt, the first and most enduring of civilisations, has a proud page in the calendar of womanhood. In no other nation, until quite recent times, has woman enjoyed so much power and prestige. Indeed, the development of woman’s position in Egypt is in some respects the reverse of what we shall find to be the general rule. There seems to have been no heritage of subjection from a barbaric past, but from the first we discover woman in a position of honour and influence. Through the long ages of Egypt’s power she retains that position, and she finally loses it at the very stage of incipient decay at which the women of other civilisations are beginning to obtain it.

We need not pause to point the moral for those who think that “the subordination of women is invariably one of the prices of empire”; but we may recall our warning that there has been no uniformity in the separate national lines of human development. At the lowest levels of culture men and women are physically, mentally, and morally equal. There are, however, differences that contain the germ of the future divergence. The tie of the children makes the woman, like the female animal in her shorter motherhood, economically dependent on the male. As he grows in wisdom or astuteness, he will perceive and abuse it. Moreover, though sex functions as such lay little disability on the woman at that level of culture, the difference of their work has led to a difference in the nature of their powers. The man, accustomed to hunt and fight, works in spasms of energy, and can exert his stored force with greater effect on occasion. The woman works continuously and less violently. It may be added, too, that she has inherited an instinct of passivity in love: the male an instinct of active search and conquest—an instinct curiously embodied in the ovum and the sperm-cell.

In all this we have a clear promise of the later development; and when the political structure evolves in the way I have indicated, and the control quite naturally falls to the men, the real wonder is that there were ever any approaches to a matriarchate at all. But many circumstances may influence the natural course of development; and it is sometimes forgotten that these circumstances may have passed away long before the race or tribe comes to our knowledge. Yet the effect on woman’s position may remain, in people so tenacious of traditions. I have described many such circumstances, and need add here only the possibility of a distinctly moral or humane development on the point of the treatment of woman in some tribes. There are plenty of instances of the development among lowly tribes of one or other virtue (say veracity among the Khonds, or pacificness among the Esquimaux) above the European level.

We are, therefore, quite prepared to find exceptions to the general rule that, as races civilise and pass into the light of history, woman will be found subordinate. At the same time, we must, for the purpose of this inquiry, bear clearly in mind the distinction between power and respect in the home, or in social life generally, and influence in the political administration. Even in works that profess to deal with woman’s political development this is not always done. Possibly, if we bear that distinction in mind, we may find it necessary to modify a prevailing impression in regard to ancient Egypt.

The golden age of the women of Egypt comes comparatively late (about 1500 B.C.) in the history of that remarkable nation; but all the records tend to show that her position was one of relative ease and dignity from the beginning of the dynastic race. Between 8000 and 5000 B.C. we find broken traces of a long struggle for the Nile delta between tribes (apparently) from the African east and the Asiatic west. About 5000 B.C. a powerful, civilised race enters the arena, conquers the land, and founds the Egyptian people that we know so well. Where they came from is still a matter of conjecture, but there is good reason to believe that they brought their early civilisation from some part of southern Arabia. We must suppose that they came from one of those tribes, still plentiful enough in the north of Africa and the south of Asia, in which women held a good position. Even to-day we find tribes side by side in the African desert (such as the Tuaregs and the Bedouins) who hold a radically different attitude towards their women. This must have been the case with the great variety of tribes that were found in the region of Persia, Syria, and Arabia thousands of years before Christ. From one tribe came the Jews, whose attitude to woman has had so baneful an influence on her history. From another came the ancestors of the Egyptians of the historic period.