Concerning Women

by Suzanne La Follette

When the bargain has been made and the bride delivered to her husband’s family, her services generally become, save in tribes where residence is matrilocal, the property of her purchasers, and she is subject to her husband, or, where the patriarchal system is highly developed, to the head of his tribe. It must be remarked, however, that although this is the usual arrangement, it is not invariable. Among some peoples, the husband’s rights are purely sexual, the services of the wife, and often even her children, belonging to her own tribe; and among others, the husband must pay for his bride in services which render him for a long period the virtual slave of his wife’s relatives. The point to be remarked in all this is that any conception of woman as an individual entity, as in any sense belonging to herself, and not to her own relatives or to her husband and his family, seems to be practically non-existent among primitive peoples, as it was until recently among civilized peoples. But it must be remarked, too, that in this respect her position is only less desirable than that of the man; for in primitive society the group so dominates the individual that in almost every phase of life he is hedged about with restrictions and taboos which leave little room for the play of personality and the pursuit of individual desires. All social advancement has been in the direction of the individual’s escape from this group-tyranny.

So important is the part that the labour of women plays in the primitive world, that the wife or wives are often the sole support of husband and family; and a man’s wealth and social prestige may actually depend upon the number of his wives. “Manual labour among savages,” says Westermarck, “is undertaken chiefly by the women; and as there are no day-labourers or persons who will work for hire, it becomes necessary for any one who requires many servants to have many wives.” There are no day-labourers or persons who will work for hire. Women, then, are the first victims of that deep-rooted and instinctive preference for living by the labour of other people, which has played so momentous and sinister a rôle in the world’s history. Among tribes whose mode of life has made them exploitable by stronger and more highly organized hordes—as, for example, an agricultural people which is conquered by a more mobile and disciplined tribe of herders—there, among the expropriated class, are day-labourers and people who will work for hire, for these have no choice or alternative; but among peoples where militant exploitation is impossible—as among the hunting-tribes—no man can be forced to work for another man, for the simple reason that there is no way of compelling him to share the product of his labour. But even here we see the economic phenomenon of the labour of women being exploited as the labour of man is exploited after conquest and the foundation of the exploiting State; and this is the case chiefly because certain natural disadvantages render them easily exploitable, as I shall show later.

It may be remarked in this connexion, that sexual division of labour appears to be quite arbitrary among primitive peoples; and that it often bears little resemblance to the division which has existed for so long among Europeans that it has apologists who regard it as being divinely ordained.[3] This suggests at least that the European division is arbitrary too. Indeed, it has undergone considerable change. Brewing, for example, was regarded as woman’s work in mediaeval England. It is even supposed that the monasteries, which excluded women from other service within their walls, employed women brewers. In general, it appears a fair conclusion that the occupations which are considered least desirable are given over to the subordinate sex. Thus men, according to the Vaertings, during the period when women dominated in Egypt, were forced to care for children and perform the drudgery of the household. Where military enterprise plays a part in tribal life, the division of labour appears to give validity to the contention of Spencer and others that man is militant and woman industrial; yet the exclusion of women from military activity is no doubt primarily due quite as much to the taboos against them as to their own lack of warlike spirit. Indeed, there are tribes where women take active part in fighting; and there are folk-tales in plenty which tell of their prowess—as, for example, in the epic lore of Greece and Russia. But because of a primitive awe of the function of menstruation, women are often considered unclean, and excluded on this account from many tribal activities, particularly from religious rites. Among such peoples, it would not be surprising to find that the same superstition excluded women from participation in any enterprise in which the tribal gods are so active and their aid so important as in war. In certain tribes of South Africa there is, according to Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons, a direct connexion between militancy and a taboo against woman. “A man sleeping with his wife must be careful not to touch her with his right hand. Otherwise his strength as a warrior goes from him and he will surely be killed.”

Whatever be the basis of sexual division of labour among different tribes, and whatever minor differences there be in the relative position of the sexes, one thing is certain, and it is all we are at present concerned with, namely: in what Dr. Lowie has called “that planless hodge-podge, that thing of shreds and patches called civilization,” woman almost invariably occupies a more or less inferior position. Dr. Lowie himself is careful to warn his readers against the popular assumption that the position of primitive woman is always abject, and that the status of woman offers a sure index of cultural advancement; nevertheless he says that “It is true that in by far the majority of both primitive and more complex cultures woman enjoys, if we apply our most advanced ethical standards, a less desirable position than man.”

The obvious question is, Why? The answer is equally obvious, and has been so often stated and discussed that I need do no more than mention it here. Woman, however nearly her physical strength in the natural state may approximate that of man, is under a peculiar disadvantage in being the childbearing sex. During pregnancy, at least in its later stages, and during childbirth, she is powerless to defend herself against aggression. She is also at considerable disadvantage during the early infancy of her child. Man in the savage state, having none of that consideration which proceeds in a rough ratio with cultural development, takes advantage of her periodic weakness and her consequent need of protection, to force her into a subordinate position. Superstition, masculine jealousy and desire for domination, have of course been joined with the economic motive in bringing about this subjection to the male; but these motives could not have operated if her subjection had not been physically possible. If woman had had the natural advantage over man, she would have used it to subject him, precisely as he used his advantage to subject her; for the human being in the ruder stages exploits other human beings, when possible, as a matter of course, without any of those pretexts and indirections that characterize communities where the sense of human rights has become sufficiently general to gain the doubtful tribute of disingenuousness. It is among these more enlightened communities that the subjection of woman—or of any class—becomes reprehensible: a society that exploits human beings through ignorant brutality is not open to the same criticism as a society which continues to exploit them when clearly aware that in doing so it is violating a natural right.

II

So much for the cause of woman’s subjection and exploitation. It has had powerful abetment in superstitious notions concerning sex, such as the primitive horror of menstruation. “Even educated Indians,” says Dr. Lowie, “have been known to remain under the sway of this sentiment, and its influence in moulding savage conceptions of the female sex as a whole should not be underrated. The monthly seclusion of women has been accepted as a proof of their degradation in primitive communities, but it is far more likely that the causal sequence is to be reversed and that her exclusion from certain spheres of activity and consequently lesser freedom is the consequence of the awe inspired by the phenomena of periodicity.”

It is evident that this superstition has operated powerfully to segregate women into a special class, excluded from full and equal participation in the life of the community. It is also reasonable to assume that it has stimulated the growth of many other superstitions that have hedged them about from time immemorial. It is probably, for example, closely connected with the Chinese association of evil with the female principle of the Universe, and with the Hebrew notion that sorrow entered the world through the sin of a woman. No doubt it may be connected with the mediaeval tendency to regard woman as a mysterious and supernatural being, either angelic or demoniac. The conception of sibyls and witches is derived from it; and likewise the notion which shows an interesting persistence even now, that a good woman is somewhat nearer the angels than a good man, and a bad woman much more satanic than a bad man.[4] Once the idea is established that woman is a being extra-human, minds prepossessed by this superstition may see her as either subhuman or superhuman; or these two notions may coexist, as in Christian society.

The notion that there is always a savour of sin in the indulgence of sexual appetite, even when exercised under due and formal regulation, has also had a profound effect on the status of women. This notion is to be found in both primitive and civilized communities; and since to each sex the other sex represents the means of gratifying sexual desire, the other sex naturally comes, where such a notion obtains, to represent temptation and sin. But where one sex is dominant and tends to regard itself as the sum of humanity, the other sex is forced to bear alone the burden of responsibility for the evil that sex represents; and it is therefore hedged about by the dominant sex with all sorts of restrictions intended to reduce its opportunities to be tempting, and thus to minimize its harmfulness.