Women's work

“ If this new evaluation of woman’s work in civilization seems to err on the side of woman, we shall be satisfied if it helps to bring about a re-evaluation which shall include women not in an incidental way but as people of flesh and blood and brain—feeling, seeing, judging and directing, equally with men, all the great social forces which mold character and determine general comfort, well-being and happiness. ”

“ And it is this principle—that woman's work is the kind of work which man prefers not to do—which regulates and defines not only the labour of a woman in her own household, but the labour of women generally. ”

“ In these pages we have made some record of woman's work in past centuries, and also caught glimpses of duties, loves, hopes, fears, and sorrows not unlike our own. A wider sphere is now accorded, and a deeper responsibility devolves upon woman to fill it wisely and well. We should never forget that, as far as they were faithful to the duties appointed to them, they elevated their sex to a higher and nobler position, and therein performed the best work of the women of the Middle Ages. ”

“ The complex questions of woman's social status are still largely centred about the question of her industrial place. The insistent claim of the sex that they shall be regarded as worthy of a part in the world's work projects into the discussion of the place that she shall occupy many other questions concerning matters which are immediately involved. ”

“ To keep at all within limits it is necessary to hold the presentation of each learned woman merely to those points in her life and work that have to do with her as an exponent of new ideals for women, or as marking by her own achievements new feminine possibilities in the arts, in learning, or in letters. ”

“ I do not mean that rocking the cradle and making bread is as hard work as any, but that women have always been doing man's work, and that all the outcry society makes against work for women is not to protect women, but a [157] certain class called ladies. Now, I believe that work is good for ladies ”

“ Is it not rather that we want, in our modern [Pg 94] workshops, the influence conveyed by daily intercourse between women to whom wealth has given the means of culture and refinement, and the labourers whom poverty obliges to work with their hands, but who need not therefore part with any essential feminine attribute? If, in all the works where women are employed in the inferior departments, the daughters of the masters were instructed in the business, made so thoroughly conversant with it as to be able to take a real part in its direction, two advantages would be gained. ”

“ But who shall say for another—much more, who shall say for half the human race—this, or this, is the measure of your capacity; this, and no other, is the work you are qualified to perform? ‘Women’s work,’ it is said, ‘is helping work.’ Certainly it is. And is it men’s work to hinder? The vague information that women [Pg 172] are to be ministering angels is no answer to the practical questions, Whom are they to help, and how? ”

“ The Morning Post, after giving the names of the guests present, added that the wide range of feminine activity, shown in the lives and work of those ladies present, proved that into the last four decades women had compressed the work of four centuries. That the interests, work, and present place in the social scheme of women were entirely on a level with that of men, this being the strongest testimony of the enormous advance in civilisation made by all the English-speaking peoples in the past forty years. ”

“ If from the women who are to-day preparing for some sort of professional work, we should exclude all who expect to teach, all who are planning to enter upon some sort of scientific research, all who are training themselves for public speaking, all who are preparing for the effective management of large enterprises, all who are writing on domestic or medical matters, the scope of feminine activity would be almost unbelievably narrowed. ”

“ Let her be encouraged to open a store, to work a garden, plant and tend an orchard, to learn any of the lighter mechanical trades, to study for a profession, whenever her circumstances and her tastes shall render any of these desirable. Let woman, and the advocates of justice to women, encourage and patronize her in whatever laudable pursuits she may thus undertake ”

“ The result is not discord but a fuller and freer harmony of action and intention. In industrial undertakings they still have far to go, but women will enter more and more into them and with happy results. The professions indeed supply the keystone to the arch of woman’s liberty. ”

“ These efforts have been reasonably successful; almost every avenue of work is open to women, and almost every coveted opportunity for preparation is hers. The reaction, however, has come, and the pertinent question is being asked, “Why has so little been done to improve the work of woman in those fields which have always without question been considered legitimately hers?” ”

“ She then discusses at length the women whose work has been glorious, and closes with an eager appeal to our women to engage in this work, as the following lines will show: "While we appreciate the work that has been done by these women, yet we must not think the work completed, This century opened with as broad a field as did the other." ”

“ Where women enter the higher fields of learning, they show a tendency—although not so marked as in the past—to select those lines of work and thought which have no practical bearing on every day life. ”

“ As a result, effort is now being concentrated on the most favourable fields, and recent events have shown the wisdom of this course. In spite of many failures, the examples of successful combination are sufficiently numerous to prove that the task of organising women’s labour, if difficult, is by no means hopeless. ”

“ On the other hand, they are fully aware that there is a necessary connection between the views which appear to be in course of formation as to the proper position of women in the labour market, and the change which has taken place in the standpoint from which all questions—even the most abstract—regarding the condition of women are now discussed. ”

“ Her work in every line reveals the earnestness and conscientiousness that are her characteristics. Her life is full of domestic, literary and social activities, and her career h;is aided powerfully in opening up new fields of work for the intelligent and cultured women of the Southern States. ”

“ I chose to interpret the woman mind through the modern American woman, partly because she has learned the great lesson of organization, and has thus been able to work more effectively, and to impress her will on the community more strikingly than other women in other ages. ”

“ If broad-minded, sensible women could be appointed to make monthly lectures at every public schoolhouse [24] throughout the country, telling them how and what to do, getting them together, and interesting them in good literature and showing them their advantages, giving good advice, something like a ‘woman’s department’ in magazines, this would fill a great need in the life of country women. Increase our social life and you increase our pleasures, and an increase of pleasure means an increase of good work. ”

“ There were still recognized limitations to female effort, far straiter than those now laid down, if indeed any limitations, other than those drawn by physical conditions can be said now to exist. As formerly in educational circles, so now in those of affairs there was overcrowding among the women who sought work; and just in time to relieve the stress there was opened a new field of labor, peculiarly adapted to the feminine nature and need, in the manipulation of the novel instrument of record. ”

“ Sometimes I’ve an idea she’s like a painter who, when they asked him what his canvas was going to be, said, ‘Oh, as it may happen.’ But whatever nature’s intentions, women do work. I’m not thinking about an unimportant little class of women [183] who spend their time in dressing and simpering at one another. I’m thinking of women—the race of women. ”

“ They may be better adapted to the constitution of the female sex, but the question arises, Are those in which women now engage, except domestic duties, more congenial [Pg xii] to their taste, more acceptable to their feelings, more likely to develop their mental powers, and rightly direct their moral nature, than many others in which they might engage? ”

“ In the middle ages, the work of women was clearly defined and unmistakable. If they were of the lower class, they made the clothes, spun the linen, kept the house; if of the higher, they received the guests, they embroidered, they presided at tournaments, and they were the family doctors. ”

“ Let us take, then, the only marked case which observation affords, of apparent inferiority of women to men, if we except the merely physical one of bodily strength. No production in philosophy, science, or art, entitled to the first rank, has been the work of a woman. Is there any mode of accounting for this, without supposing that women are naturally incapable of producing them? ”

“ The peculiarity of these arguments, intended to dissuade women from being workers, was, that while poets, philosophers, and essayists were picturing women as weak, tender creatures, clinging for protection to man as the vine to the oak, the lovely presiding geniuses of homes, the expenders of wealth produced by man, there were, according to the census of 1860, one million women working by the side of men in various domains of “coarse, rough toil.” ”

“ She attended lectures by intellectual women on the higher life, and the new thought, and the advanced ideas. She read pamphlets and books written by modern women on the work of women in the social, political and industrial fields. ”

“ The employment of women in the work is a providential necessity. Nearly all ours are American. Women are quicker in their work—men stronger. Our women have the leisure that belongs to nearly all manual occupations. ”

“ They are a small, insignificant group of useless members of society, the parasite women, whose very uselessness and self-indulgence leads to childlessness and degeneration. Who are the women who work? All women except the parasites. In office, store and factory, in school, college and university, in kitchen and nursery, on the field and in the farm-yard, in public and private life all women are working, Not only are almost all women working to-day, but all women have worked since the dawn of human existence. Women were workers before men. They were the pioneers and originators of all industry. ”

“ Their broad acquaintance with the whole range of intellectual subjects eminently fits the sex for special work in any department. To distinguish by their method of treatment the writings of women is no longer possible. Their pens have the same grace and vigor of style as those of men, while there is no fineness or daintiness of touch in their writings which does not find counterpart in those of men.
The fiction of the century reveals woman intrepidly discussing political, economic, and labor questions with a large degree of assurance, and others with a great deal of acuteness and insight. ”

“ But while these substantial gifts have come from men, the actual carrying on of this splendid work has been entirely done by women, largely college women, throughout the country, and is only another of the many different avenues of work along educational lines being conducted in this country by our women. ”

“ It is a branch of business that females cannot carry on alone, as the most of it requires considerable labor that women are not able to perform." In the census returns of Great Britain for 1850, we find four women under the head of block cutters. ”

“ And there is other work on every side waiting to be done by women,—the work of healers, preachers, physicians, artists, organizers of labour, captains of industry, &c., while on the other hand women are waiting to be prepared for service, and ready to bridge over, as they alone can, many a gulf between class and class which now presents a grave obstacle to social and political progress. ”

“ It is true many married women among the professional classes work outside the home, but the practice is not sufficiently [Pg 79] widespread to meet with the general approval of a conservative society. ”

“ They have no desire to discuss, theoretically, the duties, rights, and responsibilities of women. They consider that it would be unwise to give prominence to considerations affecting the political or social position of women, in a work dealing specially with their industrial situation. ”

“ Artistic Crafts.—The artistic crafts proper are hardly followed at all by women. With the decay of domestic industries they lost what skill and knowledge they once possessed, and technical education has not yet restored them to their rightful position as skilled workers. ”

“ The predominance which domestic life acquired among the upper classes during feudal times did much toward elevating the women of these classes to social equality with men.
Although during this period there exists among the people a great difference in the kind of work performed by men and the work performed by women in the higher classes, nevertheless the position of the wife was one of respect, and often one of authority. ”

“ There are many examples of women that have excelled in learning, and even in war, but this is no reason we should bring them all up to Latin and Greek, or else military discipline, instead of needle-work and housewifery. ”

“ But in the larger sense, "charm"—which means the power to effect work without employing brute force—is indispensable to women. Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm. ”