There are 1,371,426 women laborers in Italy. Their condition is wretched. In agriculture, as well as in the industries, they are given the rough, poorly paid work to do. They are exploited to the extreme. Women straw plaiters have been offered 20 centimes, even as little as 10 centimes (4 to 2 cents), for twelve hours’ work. The average daily wage for women is 80 centimes to 1 franc (16 to 20 cents). The maximum is 1 franc 50 centimes (30 cents). The law has fixed the maximum working day for women at twelve hours, and prohibits women under twenty years of age from engaging in work that is dangerous and injurious to health. There are maternity funds for women in confinement, financial aid being given them for four weeks after the birth of the child. Under all these circumstances the organization of women is exceedingly difficult. Even the Socialists have neglected the organization of workingwomen.

Socialist propaganda among women agricultural laborers was begun in 1901. In Bologna, in the autumn of 1902, there was held a meeting of the representatives of 800 agricultural organizations (having a total membership of 150,000 men and women agricultural laborers). The constitution of the society is characteristic; many of its clauses are primitive and pathetic. This society is intended to be an educational and moral organization. Women members are exhorted “to live rightly, and to be virtuous and kind-hearted mothers, women, and daughters.”[93] It is to be hoped that the task of the women will be made easier through the efforts of the society’s male members to make themselves virtuous and kind-hearted fathers, husbands, and sons. Or are moral duties, in this case also, meant only for woman?

The movement favoring the abolition of the official regulation of prostitution was introduced into Italy by Mrs. Butler. A congress in favor of abolition was held in 1898 in Genoa. Recently, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Agnes MacLaren and Miss Buchner, the movement has been revived, and urged upon the Catholic clergy. The Italian branch of the International Federation for the Abolition of the Official Regulation of Prostitution was founded in 1908. In the same year was held in Rome the successful Congress of the Federation of Women’s Clubs. This Congress, representing the nobility, the middle class, and workingwomen, brought the woman’s suffrage question to the attention of the public. A number of woman’s suffrage societies had been organized previously, in Rome as well as in the provinces. They formed the National Woman’s Suffrage League, which, in 1906, joined the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance. Through the discussions in the women’s clubs, woman’s suffrage became a topic of public interest. The Amsterdam Report [of the Congress of the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance] says: “The women of the aristocracy wish to vote because they are intelligent; they feel humiliated because their coachman or chauffeur is able to vote. The workingwomen demand the right to vote, that they may improve their conditions of labor and be able to support their children better.” A parliamentary commission for the consideration of woman’s suffrage was established in 1908. In the meantime the existence of this commission enables the President of the Ministry to dispose of the various proposed measures with the explanation that such matters will not be considered until the commission has expressed itself on the whole question. Women have active and passive suffrage for the arbitration courts for labor disputes.

SPAIN[94]

Total population:18,813,493.
Women:9,558,896.
Men:9,272,597.
No federation of women’s clubs.
No woman’s suffrage league.

Whoever has traveled in Spain knows that it is a country still living, as it were, in the seventeenth century,—nay in the Middle Ages. The fact has manifold consequences for woman. In all cases progress is hindered. Woman is under the yoke of the priesthood, and of a Catholicism generally bigoted. The Church teaches woman that she is regarded as the cause of carnal desire and of the fall of man. By law, woman is under the guardianship of man. Custom forbids the “respectable” woman to walk on the street without a man escort. The Spanish woman regards herself as a person of the second order, a necessary adjunct to man. Such a fundamental humiliation and subordination is opposed to human nature. As the Spanish woman has no power of open opposition, she resorts to cunning. By instinct she is conscious of the power of her sex; this she uses and abuses. A woman’s rights advocate is filled with horror, quite as much as with pity, when she sees this mixture of bigotry, coquetry, submissiveness, cunning, and hate that is engendered in woman by such tyranny and lack of progress.

The Spanish woman of the lower classes receives no training for any special calling; she is a mediocre laborer. She acts as beast of burden, carries heavy burdens on her shoulders, carries water, tills the fields, and splits wood. She is employed as an industrial laborer chiefly in the manufacture of cigars and lace. “The wages of women,” says Professor Posada,[95] “are incredibly low,” being but 10 cents a day. As tailors, women make a scanty living, for many of the Spanish women do their own tailoring. The mantilla makes the work of milliners in general superfluous. In commercial callings women are still novices. Recently there has been talk of beginning the organization of women into trade-unions.

Women are employed in large numbers as teachers; teaching being their sole non-domestic calling. Elementary instruction has been obligatory since 1870, however, only in theory. In 1889 28 per cent of the women were illiterate. In many cases the girls of the lower classes do not attend school at all. When they do attend, they learn very little; for owing to the lack of seminaries the training of women teachers is generally quite inadequate. A reform of the central seminary of women teachers, in Madrid, took place in 1884; this reform was also a model for the seminaries in the provinces. The secondary schools for girls are convent schools. In France there are complaints that these schools are inadequate. What, then, can be expected of the Spanish schools! The curriculum includes only French, singing, dancing, drawing, and needlework. But the “Society for Female Education” is striving to secure a reform of the education for girls.

Preparation for entrance to the university must be secured privately. The number of women seeking entrance to universities is small. Most of them, so far as I know, are medical students. However, the Spanish women have a brilliant past in the field of higher education. Donna Galinda was the Latin professor of Queen Isabella. Isabella Losa and Sigea Aloisia of Toledo were renowned for their knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; Sigea Aloisia corresponded with the Pope in Arabic and Syriac. Isabel de Rosores even preached in the Cathedral of Barcelona.