More and more must we demand that woman be freed from unmeaning drudgery—and from the enervating influences of support in return for sex, in marriage or out of it. Only by self-assertion and by self-development through the work which she may elect, will woman come into her own.
Woman’s Place
By Gertrude Breslau Fuller
A woman’s place is like a man’s place. It is where her work is, wherever she can do the most good; wherever she serves herself best without invading any one else.
Woman’s Demand for Work
By Josephine Butler
(From “Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture.”)
The demand of the women of the humbler classes for bread may be more pressing, but it is not more sincere than that of the women of the leisure classes for work. And these two demands coming together, it seems to me, point to an end so plainly to be discerned, that I marvel that any should remain blind to it. The latter demand is the attestation of the collective human conscience that God does not permit any to live as cumberers of the earth, and that the very conditions of their moral existence is, that efforts and pains taken by them should answer to some part of the needs of the community.