Women and economic evolution: or, The effects of industrial changes upon the status of women

by Theresa Schmid McMahon

In the early history of civilization group life was an advantage over individual struggle, and implied the subordination of the interests of the individual to that of the group.[105]

This was especially applicable to women. Protection was essential to women in prehistoric times, and the protection afforded by the group gave greater security than that of a single individual. Protection of the female and her offspring was necessary for a rapid increase of population, and numbers were no small element in determining the success of a tribe in competing with enemies. Those individuals most adaptable to group life had the best chance of surviving and of leaving offspring to whom they transmitted those qualities of character which made subordination no hardship.

In ancient societies we have instances of women exercising the highest function of the state without affecting the status of women in general. They exercised these functions not as a concession to a sex, but because they represented a group which would lose its prestige unless the right to hold the office in question was granted women. Some of the most conservative nations in respect to the advancement of women, and in which the position of women has been least affected by modern radical tendencies, recognize, or have recognized in the past the right of women to the throne.[106]

Whatever rights women possessed as a class grew out of the rights of property. Just as soon as women held property in their own names we find them possessing powers in at least a degree which were attached to the land. “The German custom, which in general was hostile to women, did not interfere in the matters of property and of heredity. The person having no existence proper in the society of that epoch, and social order being summed up in property alone, the claims of land were always weightier than the claims of person.”[107] And what was true of Germany was true to a considerable extent of all the countries of Europe.

After giving examples of women taking part in the communal assemblies, Ostrogorski asks the question, “Property having in this way become the exclusive basis of the right, and the personality of the owner being henceforth completely disregarded, is not the difference between the sexes an idle distinction?”[108]

Whatever the legal or political rights of an individual or class of individuals may be, the only way to maintain them is to exercise the powers those rights involve. To be indifferent to them, to allow to others the performance of a duty of political or social significance is to invite a deprivation of a right others cherish.

The history of the political and legal rights of women must be traced by taking cognizance of a few individual cases where women exercised rights. This exercise of rights on the part of a few women does not indicate that the practice was universal but rather exceptional. If these rights were based on property, the failure to exercise them on the part of women did not show necessarily a disregard for their property rights, but that their interests were represented by the male members of the family whom they, in all probability, felt confident would guard their interests as well as they themselves could, or, perhaps better, since their knowledge of affairs outside of the household was of broader scope and their judgment based on business-world experience. This cannot be considered a usurpation of rights on the part of men but the recognition of the unity of the family. That it would lead to injustices was not contemplated by those who did not consider final results, but only immediate expediency. Some of the evils arising out of such practice were recognized in special rights extended to widows and spinsters.

“As the official maintainer of right and justice, the mayor of Bristol and Exeter, and probably of some other towns, was the guardian of widows and orphans; in the former city a promise to ‘keep, maintain and defend the widows and orphans of this town safely in their rights,’ was a part of the mayor’s oath of office. And in the latter, the duty was so burdensome that a special office, that of chamberlain, was created in 1555, in order to provide for it.”[109]

Women belonged to the family group, and all their interests were centered in the family. So long as their home relations were congenial there was no apparent reason why they should become familiar with the outside world in order to protect their interests since the interests of both parents were identical. These interests represented more nearly a unity of interests than individual interests.

Here again we find convenience playing a large part in determining the respective fields of activity of the two sexes. Custom, convention, and the precepts of the church, although powerful influences in molding social institutions, would have been of little avail if contrary to the convenience of large industrial classes.