Women's society

“ When observing then the modern change of attitude among women, towards life, we can therefore only conclude that such an immediate and pressing need is felt by society today, a claim neither to be ignored nor denied.
On this reasoning, then, and observing the eager demand of women everywhere for increased freedom and independence, we can only draw the conclusion that the whole world is dimly recognizing an immediate and pressing need for the higher services of women, services which they cannot render unless freed legally, politically and sexually. ”

“ Broadly speaking, that for which we are fighting now is the emancipation of woman; her social freedom; her intellectual freedom; her economic freedom; her political freedom; and we believe that it is through the attainment of the rights of citizenship that all these doors will be opened to us.
I wish now, briefly, to show what, as I believe, the effect would be on society generally and on woman primarily if these her demands were granted; what, in fact, woman will be in the new era. ”

“ It has specially affected the middle classes, who have been thereby enabled to enter with perfect freedom into the world of letters, to follow professional and business careers—in a word, to carve out for themselves an independent course. A new conception has arisen of what is woman’s place in society. ”

“ The most desirable amelioration of her lot will be secured by the admission of her free personality. When society strikes out from the statute-book all distinctions of sex, and admits that she is a person capable of thinking and acting for herself, she will lay the foundation of a new civilization.
In France, we are told, women sometimes fill public functions. ”

“ That women can and do enter all these professions with credit to themselves, and that they thus enhance the feeling of pride in their sex, which is a strong impulse with women, is matter for profound congratulation, and is evidence that the animus of the Suffrage movement is not that which stirs society. ”

“ And does not this lead us to some awful considerations on the importance of the moral and physical well-being of women, and their present condition in society, as a branch of legislation and politics, which must ere long be modified? ”

“ The extraordinary enthusiasm now sweeping through womanhood reveals behind its immediate feverish expression a great power of emotional and spiritual initiative. Wide and radically sweeping are the changes in women’s outlook. So much stronger is the promise of a vital force when they have refound their emancipation. To this end women must gain economic security, and the freedom for the full expression of their womanhood. The ultimate goal I conceive—at least I hope—is the right to be women, not the right to become like men. There can be no gain for women except this. ”

“ The capabilities of women in present society are the result of the prevailing objective circumstances. Society as a whole, and not only women, bear the responsibility for the main features of the shortcomings. ”

“ Just as woman's household work has been superseded by factory work, so too, they say, will the maternal obligations of woman be fulfilled collectively, and the difficulties on which the so-called reactionary members of the women's rights movement base their arguments, will in the future only arise in exceptional cases. As regards these arguments, I have already shown that I recognise fully the right of the feminine individual to go her own way, to choose her own fortune or misfortune. I have always spoken of women collectively and of society collectively. ”

“ We cannot safely cast aside, in any haste for reform, those laws, customs and opinions which it has been the slow task of our civilisation to establish, not for men only, but for women. We women have to work out many questions far more thoroughly than hitherto we have done. ”

“ Standing on the ground of common sense and the constitution of the human mind, I deny that any one knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not under the control of the men, something might have been positively known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in the nature of each. ”

“ North and South, East and West, it was recognized that American womanhood includes society, and not society American womanhood. And this recognition of a great truth helped the coming of a new era which was hard at hand. ”

“ Industries must be humanized and made fit for women. The last third of a woman's life must be freed from legal limitations and popular prejudices, so that we may secure these best years of her life for private and public service. ”

“ Then, children of one Father, they could not err, nor misconceive one another.
'Society is now so complex, that it is no longer possible to educate woman merely as woman; the tasks which come to her hand are so various, and so large a proportion of women are thrown entirely upon their own resources. ”

“ It will lead, as it unfolds, to a new understanding of the nature of the family and of the rights and responsibilities of each of its members. It will entirely transform the role of women at every level of society. ”

“ There were acts of legislation included in the working paper for reforming the position of women in society, but we have removed them because of the considerations I have just mentioned. We have not removed them because of any vacillation or lack of understanding of the correct role of the woman in society .We have removed them while maintaining our full belief in her balanced and equal status vis-a-vis the man within the new society. ”

“ If we find, considering the legal questions pertaining to women or the historical position of women in building society, that some formulas are losing us a significant section of our society, we must not adopt them. ”

“ It is to be noted that with the separation of men's and women's lodges and the growth of the influence of women in the national policy of the society, the section of the official organ devoted to the interests of women is extended. ”

“ Great thinkers, indeed, at different times, from Plato to Condorcet, besides some of the most eminent names of the present age, have made emphatic protests in favor of the equality of women. And there have been voluntary societies, religious or secular, of which the Society of Friends is the most known, by whom that principle was recognized. But there has been no political community or nation in which, by law, and usage, women have not been in a state of political and civil inferiority. ”

“ Women in general would be brought up equally capable of understanding business, public affairs, and the higher matters of speculation, with men in the same class of society; and the select few of the one as well as of the other sex, who were qualified not only to comprehend what is done or thought by others, but to think or do something considerable themselves, would meet with the same facilities for improving and training their capacities in the one sex as in the other. ”

“ Such conditions must, as time went on, have profoundly modified the women’s outlook, bending their desires to a steady, settled life, conditions under which alone the germ of social organisation could develop. ”

“ Another expression of the interest of women in society is found in the Young Women's Christian Association, Girls' Friendly Society, the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, and other organizations which care for the interests of young women exposed to imposition or temptation. It is impossible to enumerate even the more important of the organizations which owe their institution to women and are conducted by the sex for the benefit of society. ”

“ But what we are now discussing is not the need which society has of the services of women in public business, but the dull and hopeless life to which it so often condemns them, by forbidding them to exercise the practical abilities which many of them are conscious of, in any wider field than one which to some of them never was, and to others is no longer, open. ”

“ Why is it so much nobler to care for other people's children in a social settlement, or in a school, than to care for one's own in a home? Why should women mass themselves together in vast groups as industrial workers, as teachers, as suffragettes? We hear of women's work, of women's careers, of women's clubs, associations and parties, of women's interests, movements, causes. In November, 1911, two hundred and twenty women were arrested in London for assaulting the English government in the supposed interest of women. Why do women prefer social to domestic service? ”

“ Various reforms have been forced on us within the last thirty years through the necessity of recognising, legally and socially, that development in the relations of women to the state and to society which has been brought about by the pressure of the altered circumstances of modern life. ”

“ The obstacles, which stand in the way of women in the various areas of life, are greater than those, which are facing men. This fact makes it incumbent on all the awakened elements in society to support woman in her natural and legitimate endeavour to occupy her place in society. ”

“ With the rise of Protestantism, and later with the rise of modern democracy, these ideals were blended, and women found themselves, not indeed slaves and subject to sale, but serfs, entangled in a mass of feudal obligations and bound to the house. Practically, most men still hold this threefold conception of woman's place in the social organism. ”

“ These, then, are the forces which have pushed women forward in America: European political and religious persecution, the forest necessities of colonial life, the American Revolution, the struggle with slavery and intemperance, the Civil War, the industrial struggle and the need to protect women and children from capitalistic exploitation. Possibly women have now reached a point in their development where they can turn to public service and to a full realization of their powers and responsibilities without the goading necessity of a great wrong. ”

“ In view of the responsibilities and duties which society now imposes on women, changes in the direction of these reforms are not only reasonable but necessary in the common interest. To insist, however, that such reforms shall under no circumstances take account of the differences of sex is to fight against indisputable facts which must, in the end, prove too strong for us. ”

“ Thus the social position of women is in this respect very similar to that of philosophers and of the working classes. And we now see why these three elements should be united. It is their combined action which constitutes the moral or modifying force of society. ”

“ Theirs is the task of completing woman's social and political emancipation, and of educating them to meet their newfound liberties. It is possible that this present generation has a keener sense of rights than of duties; and the young women of to-day must be led to realize that the delicate adjustments still to be worked out require devotion equal to that of the earlier generations, if the toll of wasted life is not to be excessive.
What now is the relation of women to the range of political activity described in the last chapter? Have they need of the protection which government gives? ”

“ In the second place, the girls should be taught by men and women, married and unmarried, and fine ideals of actual womanhood, not alone in shops and factories, in school-rooms, and in professions—but also in homes, should be constantly held before them. Our present education leaves this training mainly to the homes, and neither the parasitic rich nor our eight million wage-earning women, when mothers, can or will attend to it. ”

“ It is true women have taken part in some of the great movements and revolutions of society, such as the Crusades, or the French revolution but only when the country in question was thrown into an emotional state, and when all other considerations were pushed into the background by the predominant passion. ”

“ Now that these subjects are being brought into the political field, women should follow them there, as they have followed their industries from the homes into the factories. There is no reason to believe that their judgments will be less sound than those of their brothers and husbands. ”

“ In the present state of civilization, the notion of guarding women from the hardening influences of the world could only be realized by secluding them from society altogether. The common duties of common life, as at present constituted, are incompatible with any other softness in women than weakness. Surely weak minds in weak bodies must ere long cease to be even supposed to be either attractive or amiable. ”

“ and women can do more towards this even than men, for women are the real architects of society. ”

“ and upon the conviction that the sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so. ”

“ With the rapid development of higher education, these women found themselves associated with large groups of independent women who could create a society of their own in advanced centers of population. There was still much to be done in securing opportunity for women; but they could go on establishing the type of life that free women were to live. ”

“ The case will be even more frequent, as increased cultivation creates a greater and greater disproportion between the ideas and faculties of women, and the scope which society allows to their activity. ”