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

by Theresa Schmid McMahon

If stress of circumstances was in any way responsible for the superior intelligence of man over other animals, woman would necessarily be the first to develop the quality of foresight, for it fell to her lot to provide for her offspring. The fulfillment of this responsibility was essential to the preservation of the race.

Primitive man and primitive woman could go through long periods of fasting, but not so their children. The mother’s maternal instinct prompted her to supply their wants before her own, while man satisfied his hunger first, and then relegated the remains of his feast to the women and the children. His first instinct was the satisfying of his wants; hers, the satisfying of her offspring’s. Here lies one of the fundamental differences between the sexes; and out of this contrast in self-thought have arisen the marked differences of character commonly designated as feminine and masculine.

If primitive man’s first concern had been to feed his mate, woman would never have become the “mother of industry.” She might have remained passive in the struggle for subsistence, as she was in the struggle against enemies.

Prehistoric men left the remains of the feast to the women and the children; and when food was scarce the women were forced to seek some means of subsistence other than the hunt afforded. They “climbed up hills for the opossum, delved in the ground with their sticks for yams, native bread, and nutritious roots, groped about the rocks for shellfish, dived beneath the sea for oysters, and fished for the finny tribe.”[6]

Woman was the “mother of industry” and the inventor of most of the early industrial arts. Says Mason, “Women were instructed by the spiders, the nest builders, the storers of food and the workers in clay like the mud wasp and the termites. It is not meant that these creatures set up schools to teach dull women how to work, but that their quick minds were on the alert for hints coming from these sources.... It is in the apotheosis of industrialism that woman has borne her part so persistently and well.”[7]

Students of primitive history have given us vivid pictures of the industrial occupations of women among different tribes; but they depend largely for their material upon examples of these industrial occupations as carried on among tribes existing at present in a state of primitive culture. Nowhere now do we find an illustration of inventive genius on the part of women generally, in a primitive state of culture corresponding to that credited to them in prehistoric times. This may be due to a lack of personal freedom, such as was known to primitive woman, or to the lack of proper incentive stimulating the individual to progress. The latter reason may account for the unprogressiveness or degeneracy of many tribes of the present day.

Following his natural instincts and utilizing his power for their gratification prehistoric man found himself in possession of an authority over woman which he had unconsciously acquired. When once conscious of this power he used it arbitrarily, and perhaps oppressively.

Among peaceable peoples there was little need for the exercise of authority, either defensively or offensively. That personal services were rendered men by the women does not necessarily signify the services were prompted by fear. It is only where militancy prevails that we find an exercise of authority by men over women which suggests the tyranny of the strong over the weak. But even here the tyranny of the strong members of the tribe over the weak is more noticeable than the tyranny of man over woman. Authority determined the status of the individual or of the sex, but it was only one of the factors determining occupation.

Contemporary tribes of low culture differ widely in the position and occupation of women, but there is sufficient resemblance of work among women generally, to make it safe to say that to the women fall the tasks most compatible with stationary habits of life.[8]

As a matter of choice women would naturally engage in those occupations which centered around the fireside. We do find many instances where owing to the employments of men, or to the habits of migration resulting from a search for food, the women are employed far from the hearth. On the whole, however, the occupations commonly pursued by women freed them from carrying children long distances. Westermarck says that the occupations of men are “such as require strength and ability; fighting, hunting, fishing, the construction of implements for the chase and war, and the building of huts.