Concerning Women

by Suzanne La Follette

There is still a goodly number of prejudices and discriminations to be overcome before women in business and the professions shall stand on an equal footing with men as regards opportunity and remuneration. Except where she is in business for herself, the woman in these pursuits must generally be content with a lower rate of pay than men; and if observation may be taken to count for anything, she is expected to work somewhat harder for what she gets—less loafing on the job is tolerated in her than in the male employee. She is also more likely to find herself pocketed; that is to say, in a position from which, because of her sex, there is no possibility of further advance because the higher positions are reserved for men. It is so universally the rule that women must content themselves with reaching the lower rungs of the occupational ladder, that the instances where they manage to attain to places of responsibility and authority are still rare enough to be found worthy of remark in the press. The same thing is true of political positions; women are not yet represented in politics in anything like a just proportion to their numbers, nor are they often able to get themselves either elected or appointed to responsible positions. None the less, considering the comparatively short time since their emergence into the business world and the world of public affairs, they are already making an excellent showing.

The world of business and the professions, like the world of industry, has its occupations which are considered peculiarly suitable for women. Strictly subordinate positions are thought to suit them very well; hence there is quite an army of women stenographers, bookkeepers, clerks and secretaries to be found in the business section of any modern city. The personnel of the nursing profession is made up almost exclusively of women; and the work of teaching in our public schools, especially where it is most conspicuously underpaid, is largely in their hands. There is, to be sure, an impression current among members of school boards that marriage disqualifies a woman for the teaching profession; but the single woman is fairly secure in her position, possibly because it does not pay well enough to be very attractive to men. Occupations connected with the arts are also held, in this country, to be particularly well adapted for women, although it must be noted that the prejudice of male musicians is effective enough to exclude them from the personnel of our important orchestras. It is in the creative arts that their work is most welcomed; more especially in the field of literature; and this may seem strange, in view of the fact that so many eminent authorities believe that their sex renders them incapable of attaining any significance in creative work. It is, I apprehend, rather to the low opinion in which aesthetic pursuits are held in this country than to a high opinion of female ability, that this peculiar condition must be ascribed.

But if certain occupations are considered peculiarly appropriate for women, there is none the less a great deal of prejudice against them in others. The idea that woman’s place is the home has no more disappeared from the world of business and the professions than it has disappeared from the world of industry, even though it is the business woman and the professional woman who are doing most to dislodge it. And here it may be well to remark a fact that has already been noted, with some pointed comment, by Ethel Snowden, namely: that woman’s invasion of the gainful occupations appears to be found unwomanly in proportion to the importance of the position to which she aspires.

It is the married woman in business or in professional work, as it is in industry, who suffers most from the surviving prejudices concerning her sex. When there are economies to be effected through the discharge of workers, the idea that the married woman is normally a dependent comes immediately to the fore, and she is the first employee to be discharged. For example, Equal Rights of 8 August, 1925, noted in an editorial that the city of St. Louis had begun a campaign for economy by discharging twelve married women; that there was a movement on in Germany to reduce governmental expenses by a wholesale discharge of women employees; and that, according to rumour, Mr. Coolidge’s campaign of economy was being made to bear most heavily on married women. The comment of Equal Rights on the action of the city of St. Louis is worth quoting:

St. Louis employed twenty-seven married women. It investigated the economic condition of all these, retained nine, discharged twelve, and was, at last report, still considering the case of the other six. St. Louis did not investigate the economic condition of the men employees, to see whether or not these might continue to live if they were discharged. St. Louis did not try to find out whether or not these men had fathers, brothers, mothers, or wives who might support them while they were looking for other jobs. St. Louis assumed that men have a right to economic independence and the increased happiness and opportunity that it brings. St. Louis assumed that women have no such right.

In other words, St. Louis assumed, as the German and American Governments apparently assume, and as most private employers assume, that women are employed on sufferance; especially married women. Of course it should be remembered that the position of the married woman in this respect is only worse than that of single women, and that the position of women is only worse than that of men; for, as I have already remarked, under a monopolistic economic system the opportunity to earn a living by one’s labour comes to be regarded as a privilege instead of a natural right. Women are simply held to be less entitled to this privilege than men.

That marriage should so often assume the nature of a disability for the woman who either wishes or is obliged to earn, whereas it often operates in favour of the male worker, may be attributed to the traditional assumption that married women are dependent on, and subject to, their husbands. I remarked in the preceding chapter that the married woman who wishes to engage in business finds herself, in many communities, hampered by legal disabilities arising from her marital status, whereas her husband is under no corresponding disabilities. Her position as an industrial and salaried worker is rendered insecure if not by law, at least by the same psychology that keeps legal disabilities in force. This psychology may be defined as the expectation that a woman when she marries shall surrender a much greater degree of personal freedom than the man she marries. The man who does not object to his wife’s having a career is considered generous and long-suffering. His insistence on her abandoning it and contenting herself with looking out for his domestic comfort is thought to be quite natural.[28] On the other hand, the woman who interferes in any way with a husband’s career is regarded as an extremely selfish person; while any sacrifice of herself and her ambitions to her husband and his, is thought of merely as a matter of wifely duty. How often does one hear that such and such a woman has given up her position because “her husband didn’t want her to work.” There is, too, a very general assumption that every married woman has children and should stay at home and take care of them. Now, perhaps every married woman should have children; perhaps in a future state of society men and women will marry only when they wish to bring up a family. But at present it is not so; therefore at present the assumption that a married woman should stay at home and take care of her children leaves out of account the fact that a large and increasing number of married women are childless. It may be contended that these women should stay at home and take care of their husbands; but even if we assume that the unremitting personal attention of his wife is essential to the comfort and happiness of a married man, there would still remain the question of his title to this attention at the cost of her own interests.

We are dealing here with an attitude which, general though it be, has been outmoded by the conditions of modern life. The sexual division of interests and labour which has been insisted upon so long among European peoples does not very well fit in with the organization of industrial and social life in the twentieth century. Our social ideology, like our political ideology, is of the eighteenth century; and its especial effectiveness at present is by way of obscuring our vision of the changed world that has emerged from the great economic revolution of the last century. A division of interests and labour which was convenient if not just under the conditions of economic and social life which preceded the industrial revolution, is neither convenient nor just under the conditions which prevail today. The care of young children and the management of a household may result in an unequal division of labour in families where the husband’s inability to provide for the needs of his family forces the wife to assume the burdens of a breadwinner. When one reads through the literature on the question of hours of labour for women in industry, one is struck by the persistent stressing of the married woman’s double burden of breadwinning and housekeeping. These women, it seems, must not only earn money to contribute to their families’ support, but they must, before setting out for work and after returning from it, prepare the family meals, get the children ready for school or the day-nursery, take them there and call for them, wash, sew, and perform a hundred other household tasks. This double burden is often made an argument for establishing shorter hours of work for women in industry, but never for expecting the husband to share the wife’s traditional burden as she has been forced to share his. I have no doubt that innumerable husbands are doing this; but there is no expectation put upon them to do it, and those who do not are in no wise thought to shirk their duty to their families, as their wives would be thought to do if they neglected to perform the labour of the household.

Quite analogous to this attitude of the advocates of special legislation for working women is that of the people who concern themselves with the so-called problem of the educated woman, which is supposed to be that of reconciling domesticity with intellectual pursuits. A timely illustration of this attitude is the establishment by Smith College of an institute for the “co-ordination of women’s interests.” The purpose of this institute, in the words of President Neilson, is “to find a solution of the problem which confronts almost every educated woman today—how to reconcile a normal life of marriage and motherhood with a life of intellectual activity, professional or otherwise.” Here again is the tacit assumption that marriage is the special concern of woman, and one whose claims must take precedence over her other interests, whatever they may be; that marriage and motherhood constitute her normal life, and her other interests something extra-normal which must somehow be made to fit in if possible. I have heard of no institute intended to find a way to reconcile the normal life of marriage and fatherhood with a life of intellectual activity, professional or otherwise; although when one considers how many educated men of today are obliged to compromise with their consciences in order to secure themselves in positions which will enable them to provide for their families, one is persuaded that some such institute might be at least equally appropriate and equally helpful with that which Smith College has established.

Let us forget for a moment the sophisticated traditional attitude toward this question of marriage and parenthood, and go back, as it were, to the beginning—to a fact recognized in the animal world and not entirely overlooked by primitive man, namely: that every offspring has two parents who are equally responsible for its care and protection. In the animal kingdom one finds a widely varied division of the labour connected with the care of the young. For example, the male of certain species is found to perform functions which our own usage has led us to regard as maternal. Among the viviparous animals the heavier share of responsibility rests with the female during the gestation, birth and extreme youth of the offspring; and among primitive human beings the actual physical dependence of the offspring on the mother is likely to be prolonged over a period of several years. It was, perhaps, this necessity of a close physical association between mother and child that led to a sexual division of labour under which the mother undertook the physical care of children while the father undertook the task of providing food. It must be remarked, however, that this division of labour by no means excludes productive labour on the part of the woman. Among most tribes she augments the food-supply through agriculture, grubbing, or sometimes through fishing or hunting; and there are tribes, notably in Africa, where she is the sole provider for the family. The Vaertings have remarked that the drudgery connected with the care of children is invariably imposed by the dominant upon the subject sex; a view which is in perfect consonance with what we know of the general human willingness to transfer to other shoulders the burden of uninteresting though necessary labour. Since women have most often been subject, they have most often been forced to undertake this drudgery, either in lieu of or in addition to the labour of providing food and shelter for their families.