By Margaret O. B. Wilkinson
(From “Parents and Their Problems.”)
We must accustom ourselves to another new idea that as marriage is no longer a duty, for all women, so it is no longer a trade or profession, requiring all the time and labor of all married women. Some confusion has arisen on this point because certain labors have been associated with marriage in the popular mind. But these labors may, in the near future, come to be considered as trades in themselves, not inseparably connected with marriage, and the wives of the days to come may be found performing diverse tasks. For we know that in our own times women may be the best of wives and good mothers, but with small knowledge of spinning, weaving, basket-making, pottery-making, agriculture or even baking, although all of these trades used to be inseparably connected with the lives of married women. And tomorrow, owing to changed conditions, the woman doctor or lawyer may seem to be as desirable of a mate as the cook or seamstress today. So much is possible!
Woman’s Work in Woman’s Way
By Lida Parce
(American contemporary. Educator. Author of “Economic Determinism,” etc. From “The Progressive Woman.”)
If the economic interest is the important one, then woman’s work has always been the important work. The loom and the hand mill were strictly feminine implements, so long as their product was used only to supply the wants of the people. Only when the products of the loom and the mill became useful in competition did man take them up; and then for purposes of exploitation. For thousands of years man has devastated the earth and drenched it in blood to further that exploitation. Now he is beginning to find out that, after all, the only safe and proper use that can be made of goods is in supplying the needs of the people. Man has not yet begun to learn humility, but he will learn it.
Isn’t it time for women to begin to defend their work, and their way of doing it? And to make a sober and critical estimate of the part that man has played in history? I think that women may well take pride in doing their work in a woman’s way.