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Helena M. Swanwick. The Future of the Women's Movement
The Future of the Women's Movement
Table of Contents
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
THE FUTURE OF THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
CHAPTER I. CAUSES OF THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
CHAPTER II. WHAT IS THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT?
CHAPTER III. THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN
CHAPTER IV. PHYSICAL FORCE
CHAPTER V. DEMOCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER VI. VOTES
CHAPTER VII. THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM (1) The Wage-Earner
CHAPTER VIII. THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM (2) The Mother
CHAPTER IX. THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM (3) The Housewife
CHAPTER X. THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM (4) The Prostitute
CHAPTER XI. THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM (5) Commercialised Vice
CHAPTER XII. THE MAN’S WOMAN: WOMANLY
CHAPTER XIII. THE WOMAN’S WOMAN: A PERSON
CHAPTER XIV. SEX-ANTAGONISM (1) Man’s Part
CHAPTER XV. SEX-ANTAGONISM (2) Woman’s Part
CHAPTER XVI. THE OLD ADAM AND THE NEW
FOOTNOTES
Отрывок из книги
Helena M. Swanwick
Published by Good Press, 2019
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Much of the great change has been due to deliberate and devoted effort on the part of men as well as women, who, at any rate, thought they were making for progress. The great impulse towards the education of the people which characterised the nineteenth century made a far greater revolution in the lives of women than of men. Not only did elementary education put all the young girls of the working class on something like an equality with boys, but the foundation of public day schools and the decisions of Charity Commissioners gave girls of the middle class a chance of education in school subjects, and, what was of at least as much importance, removed them from the hothouse air of the home and the seminary and gave them the discipline of knowing their fellows and finding their level. The great movement for the higher education of girls secured, step by step, their instruction in the universities, their admission to degree examinations and, finally, their admission to degrees in all but the two most conservative universities. Of more recent growth is the inevitable development of postgraduate research among women. All these changes were deliberate and were regarded by those who initiated them as great reforms. So also were the efforts made, largely by the same group of people, to open careers to qualified women. All the world knows of the foundation of the great modern career of sick-nursing; of the more bitter and prolonged struggle of women to be allowed to study medicine and surgery and qualify as practitioners therein; of the gradual introduction of women into State service as clerks, inspectors and commissioners. All these changes had, to a greater or less degree, to be fought for by those who desired them. They represented improvements in the status of women, increase in power, in knowledge and in earnings. People resisted them with more or less tenacity, and used against the reformers the sort of arguments they are still using against further emancipation; but few can be found now who do not admit that, broadly speaking, they represented improvements. There are, of course, some Orientalists even in England, who think in their hearts that it was a great mistake to teach women to read. But most people now accept the principle that women should have the best education available, and only differ as to what that education should be.
Other vast changes have, however, been made in the lives of women which no women or friends of women consciously strove for, which no one regarded as great reforms, which were, in fact, the unintended and unforeseen results of man’s invention and man’s commercial and financial enterprise, directed solely towards the increase of purchaseable commodities and the manipulation of these in markets; not by any means directed towards the improvement of the lives of women and the home, towards the easing of labour, or the increase of beauty, peace and health. With the introduction of machinery there came the usual talk about its lightening the lot of the worker and so forth, but when one reads the history of the first factories, of child-labour and monstrous hours of work, inhuman and foul conditions and vast fortunes made in a few months by exploitation and speculation, one is forced to recognise that the passing of work out of the home, and of the woman into the factory was accomplished without thought of social consequences, and that, of all creatures on earth, the women were the most helpless to resist this change, had they wished to do so.
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