Woman cannot be a merchant or an administratrix... Yet a great portion of the feminine population devote themselves to trade, or fill commercial positions. It is even admitted that the prosperity of commercial establishments is almost always due to the administrative genius of woman.
Woman cannot be an overseer, a foreman of a workshop... Yet a host of women superintend workshops, invent, improve, carry on manufactures alone, and contribute, by their taste and activity, to the increase of the national wealth and the industrial reputation of France.
Woman cannot be artist... Yet every one knows that the greatest literary artist of our age is a woman, George Sand; yet every one bows before Duchesnois, Mars, Georges, Maxime, Ristori, Rachel, Dorval; yet every one pauses before the beautiful paintings of Rosa Bonheur; yet since the revival of the fine arts, every century has registered many celebrated women.
We meet women everywhere, working everywhere, competing with man.... Yet Proudhon pretends that she can be nowhere, that she is excluded from every place absolutely and judicially; that if she governs and legislates like Maria Theresa, it is a contradiction;
That if she philosophises like Hypatia, it is a contradiction;
That if she commands an army and wins victories like the wife of the conqueror of Calais; if she fights like Jeanne d'Arc, Jeanne Hachette, Madame Garibaldi and thousands of others, it is a contradiction;
That if she is merchant, administratrix, superintendent of a workshop, like thousands of women, it is a contradiction;
That if she is learned like Dr. Boivin, Sophie Germain, and many others, if she is a professor as are many among us, it is a contradiction.
The thesis sustained by Proudhon is, as we have just seen, contradicted by science and by facts. We ask ourselves whether it is possible that he is ignorant of the simplest notions of Anatomy and Biology; we ask ourselves whether it is possible that he is so far blind as not to see that woman is in reality all that he pretends that she absolutely and judicially cannot be in his absurd and insulting theory; and we conclude that the author is struck with ignorance and voluntary blindness.
Your reproaches are pleasant; from the origin of society, man has been the master; now, the ancient world sunk beneath the weight of slavery, usury, and the most shameless vices; the modern world seems doomed to perish through inequality and its sad consequences, you yourself acknowledge that injustice caused by your sex exists every where in the world, and you say that man has judicial sense!