Gender inequality

“ It is only beginning to treat any men as citizens, export the rich and a favored portion of the middle class. Can we wonder that it has not yet done as much for women? As society was constituted until the last few generations, inequality was its very basis ”

“ The basic mistake of the feminists is that they do not recognise this, and therefore cannot trace the true cause of the inequality of the sexes. Sometimes they attribute women's social inferiority to her physical weakness; sometimes to the moral weakness of man. But these differences of the sexes, if they exist at all, are more likely to have arisen as effects of sex-inequality than to be causes thereof.
Socialism, on the other hand, does not look for an explanation of social enigmas in any such vague theories. Socialism holds that human society has an essentially economic basis. ”

“ The great bulk of men and women were industrially much more nearly on a level than they are today. A poor level, I grant you, for with the exception of the privileged classes, few and small were the political powers and therefore the social control of even men. But every extension of political power as granted to class after class of men has, as far as women are concerned, had the fatal effect of increasing the political inequality between men and women, thus placing women, though not apparently, yet relatively and actually upon a lower level. ”

“ There is an inequality of education. Society has shut woman in the past from all opportunities for gaining knowledge by experience. Moreover, society has seen fit to debar women from the knowledge that is acquired by instruction. (4) An inequality of rights has meant that women have been discriminated against before the law. Without direct representation in legislatures, women have suffered in proprietary matters. (5) A general sex inequality has at times made woman the property or the slave of man. ”

“ The civic inequality of woman has provoked among the more advanced members of the female sex demand for political rights, to the end of wielding the power of legislation in behalf of their civic equality. It is the identical thought that moved the working class everywhere to direct their agitation towards the conquest of the political powers. What is right for the working class can not be wrong for woman. ”

“ The facts show these individuals to be right in one point and only one, namely, that sex-injustice and sex-inequality exist; for it so happens that the facts further show the said injustice and inequality to exist wholly and solely in favour of women as against men. ”

“ To all women, in fact; for no matter how poor a man is, his wife and daughters are poorer; no matter how much of a dependent he is, the woman is more so, for she is the dependent of a dependent, the serf of a slave, the chattel of a chattel! The suppliant, not only for work and wage, but the suppliant at the hands of sex power for equality with even the man who is under the feet and the tyranny of wealth. They share together that tyranny and poverty, but he thrusts upon her alone the added outrage of sex subjugation and legal disability. ”

“ Of course we must claim absolute equality of condition between women and men, as between other groups, but it would be poor economy setting women to do men's work (as unluckily they often do now) or vice versa. ”

“ Never, until the establishment of universal [male] suffrage, did it happen that all the women in a community, no matter how well born, how intelligent, how well educated, how virtuous, how wealthy, were counted the political inferiors of all the men, no matter how base born, how stupid, how ignorant, how brutal, how poverty-stricken. This anomaly is the real innovation. Men have personally ruled the women of their families; the law has annihilated the separate existence of women; but women have never been subjected to the political sovereignty of all men simply in virtue of their sex. ”

“ Women have equality almost within their grasp; they may lose it if this civilization shall follow the path of its predecessors to ruin and oblivion. There is one way to avert this tragedy, and one only—the way of economic justice. If the women who have been active in the struggle to emancipate their sex shall enlarge their conception of freedom, and with it the scope of their demand, they can help mightily to preserve civilization through the establishment of justice. ”

“ That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other. ”

“ In behalf of the sons, the brothers and the husbands of these wage-earning women we ask for that political power which alone will insure equality of pay without regard to sex. For the sake of man's redemption and morality we demand that this injustice shall cease, for it is not possible for woman to be half-starved and man not dwarfed; for many women to be degraded and all men's lives pure; for women to be fallen and no man lost. ”

“ And nothing can be effectually done in the way of moral and physical improvement without the assistance of women.* I feel the necessity of a constant appeal on this point, and am not for treating women as the mere breeding machines for the human race, and men as the directing lords of the aggregate machinery. There is no kind of equality more deniably advantageous for the welfare of the human race than the equality of the sexes. ”

“ The outcry is led by self-styled upholders of equality between the sexes, the apostles of the positive side of Feminism, who bien entendu claim the eradication of sex boundaries in political and social life on the ground of women being of equal capacity with men, but who, when moral responsibility is in question, conveniently fall back on a sentiment, the only conceivable ground for which is to be found in the time-honoured theory of the mental and moral weakness of the female sex. ”

“ It uniformly professes to aim at the placing of the sexes on a footing of social and political equality. A very little inquiry into its concrete demands suffices to show that its aim, so far from being equality, is the very reverse—viz. to bring about, with the aid of men themselves, as embodied in the forces of the State, a female ascendancy and a consolidation and extension of already existing female privileges. ”

“ In short, it was the opinion of the great majority of both sexes, that man should work at the real business of life, and that women should remain as the mere ornaments and decorations of society. So the feeble attempt of the would-be reformers resulted in nothing; and, if any women sought to break through the conventional rules that bound them by engaging in productive occupations, they were denounced on all hands as unwomanly and especially shunned and despised by their own sex. ”

“ It is often asked if political equality—would not arouse antagonism between the sexes? If it could be proved that men and women had been harmonious in all ages and countries, and that women were happy and satisfied in their slavery, we might hesitate in proposing any change whatever; but the apathy, the helpless, hopeless resignation of a subject class, cannot be called happiness. A woman growing up under American ideas of liberty in government and religion cannot brook any disability based on sex alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that creates it. ”

“ Hence we shall not discuss the very grave and important social and political questions which have arisen from the agitation to admit to equal political rights the women of our country, and to impose on them the burden of discharging, equally with men, political and public duties. Whether so radical a change in our political and social system would advance the happiness and welfare of the American people, considered as a whole, without distinction of sex, is a question on which there is a marked disagreement among the most enlightened and thoughtful of both sexes. ”

“ If legal equality of the sexes were established, women might be able, under the law, to force public industrial schools to give them equal opportunities for training; they might also be able to enforce a demand for equal pay with men for equal work. ”

“ In countries, such as England, where an excess female population [1] has made economic difficulties for woman, and where the severe sexual restrictions, which here obtains, have bred in her sex-hostility, the suffrage movement has as its avowed ulterior object the abrogation of all distinctions which depend upon sex; and the achievement of the economic independence of woman.
To secure this economic independence every post, occupation, and Government service is to be thrown open to woman; she is to receive everywhere the same wages as man; male and female are to work side by side ”

“ My reply is that only in exceptional cases have women enjoyed the same opportunities as men. Yet these cases are sufficiently numerous to warrant the conclusion that nature affords no insuperable obstacle to sex-equality in brain; and that inferiority in the typical woman must be regarded as the result of her dependent economic condition, created by the artificial restrictions of man. ”

“ Modern Feminism has always professed to be a movement for political and social equality between the sexes. The claim for this equalising of position and rights in modern society is logically based upon the assumption of an essential equality in natural ability between the sexes. ”

“ The mass of the female sex suffers in two respects: On the one side woman suffers from economic and social dependence upon man. True enough, this dependence may be alleviated by formally placing her upon an equality before the law, and in point of rights ”

“ One of the most striking features in our progress from barbarism to civilization is the proper adjustment of the work for men and women. One test of a civilization is the difference of this work. This is a question not merely of division of labor, but of differentiation with regard to sex. It not only takes into account structural differences and physiological disadvantages, but it recognizes the finer and higher use of woman in society.
The attainable, not to say the ideal, society requires an increase rather than a decrease of the differences between the sexes. ”

“ The Bill would only establish sex equality in the narrowest legal sense. The position of the married working women in the home, where her work was the rearing of children and not the earning of rent, &c, was due to her sex, and if she were forbidden to vote unless she paid the rent, the result would be her exclusion in consequence of sex. A small property qualification inflicted no appreciable hardship on a man. Owing to the economic dependence of married women, it was entirely inapplicable to the majority of women on marriage. ”

“ We have already pointed out that Modern Feminism has two sides or aspects. The first formulates definite political, juridical and economic demands on the grounds of justice, equity, equality and so forth, as general principles; the second does not formulate in so many words definite demands as general principles, but seems to exploit the traditional notions of chivalry based on male sex sentiment, in favour of according women special privileges on the ground of their sex, in the law, and still more in the administration of the law. ”

“ On the other point which is involved in the just equality of women, their admissibility to all the functions and occupations hitherto retained as the monopoly of the stronger sex, I should anticipate no difficulty in convincing any one who has gone with me on the subject of the equality of women in the family. I believe that their disabilities elsewhere are only clung to in order to maintain their subordination in domestic life; because the generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal. ”

“ We might suppose, therefore, that Political Feminism, with its theory of sex equality based on the assumption of equal sex capacity, would be in strong opposition in this matter with Sentimental Feminism, which seeks, as its name implies, to attenuate female responsibility on grounds which are not distinguishable from the old-fashioned assumption of inferiority. ”

“ It is true that many of their leaders are women of the higher social classes but this same phenomenon has characterized, though not to the same degree, the movements of working men to conquer political rights.
“What in England and America has been the movement of a whole sex, has, in Germany under Social Democracy been merged in the movement of the working class. Women are to have their rights not as a sex, but as workers.” ”

“ The highest development of modern capitalism, as exemplified in the English-speaking countries, has placed man to all intents and purposes, legally under the heel of woman. So far as the relations of the sexes are concerned, it would be the task of Socialism, to emancipate man from this position, if sex-equality be the goal aimed at. ”

“ A variety of causes, notably modern economic development, in their effect on family life, also the illegitimate application of the modern democratic notion of the equality of classes and races, to that of sex, has contributed to the modern revolt against natural sex limitations. ”

“ The female sex as such has a double yoke to bear. Firstly, women suffer as a result of their social dependence upon men, and the inferior position alloted to them in society; formal equality before the law alleviates this condition, but does not remedy it. Secondly, women suffer as a result of their economic dependence, which is the lot of women in general, and especially of the proletarian women, as it is of the proletarian men. ”