The disadvantages of being a woman
Date: 2026-04-16T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Feminism; Women; Women's rights

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Title: The disadvantages of being a woman

Author: Grace Ellison

Release date: April 16, 2026 [eBook #78463]

Language: English

Original publication: London: A. M. Philpot, 1922

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78463

Credits: Bob Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING A WOMAN ***

The
Disadvantages of Being
a Woman

BY
GRACE ELLISON
Author of “Abdul Hamid’s Daughter,” “An Englishwoman
in a Turkish Harem,” etc., etc.

A. M. PHILPOT, Ltd.
69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C. 1.

THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING A
WOMAN

The
Disadvantages of Being
a Woman

BY
GRACE ELLISON
Author of “Abdul Hamid’s Daughter,” “An Englishwoman
in a Turkish Harem,” etc., etc.

A. M. PHILPOT, Ltd.
69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C. 1.

[Copyright]

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY W. JOLLY AND SONS, LTD., ABERDEEN

CONTENTS

Introduction. | Woman the Discovery of the Century. |
CHAP. | | PAGE

I.

Feminist Leaders—and their Mistakes
(i) Unwise Haste (ii) Legislation for the élite, not for the masses (iii) Hostility to Man, who should be the associate

9

II. | The Drawback of Health | 16
III. | Barred from the Professions | 24
IV. | The French Business Woman | 33
V. | Laws for Women illogical and inconsistent | 39
VI. | Can Women succeed in Politics? | 48
VII. | Sex in Work | 56
VIII. | Is Femininity at a discount? | 63
IX. | Pin-money Women | 71
X. | What is wrong with Marriage? | 77
XI. | The Future | 86

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

These are not the reflections of a woman who has failed. On the contrary, her literary record, her extensive travels, the work she did amongst the women of Turkey, and later her war-work in France, give her the right to speak with authority and to command a hearing.

INTRODUCTION

Since every age has its own great discovery, who will deny “Woman” her laurels as the Discovery of this Century?

Opinions are still divided as to how and why Woman as a Force actually made her first appearance. Some declare that she had been seeking enfranchisement for over sixty years; others maintain that the Woman Movement began with militancy.

The truth is that no one noticed her first coming. Apparently without warning, she burst the fetters of domesticity and sprang from obscurity into the blazing sun. Wakening the dullest and the most awkward of the centuries, she stepped, one might say, bounded, into Freedom.

Like radium or electricity, Woman the Force was always there, and the age that needed her discovered her. We believe that Nature intended this Force to balance the Force of Man. The scales must be even; and where one of the sexes has been either atrophied or over-developed, the State falls.

But the scales must be even. We are too near our subject, and events now happening are not sufficiently in perspective for it to be possible to write even a résume of the Woman’s Movement, but it must be evident to everyone that there is something fundamentally wrong with the situation as it stands at present.

Nothing has happened to weaken our faith in the possibilities of the great Discovery, but it cannot be denied that Woman as a Force has been and is being mishandled by many a clumsy engineer.

It is our purpose, in these pages, to examine their mistakes.

I
FEMINIST LEADERS AND THEIR MISTAKES

(i) Unwise haste (ii) legislation for the élite, not for the masses, (iii) hostility to man, who should be the associate.

Resistless as the appointed tides, the Revolution of Woman has swept over us. Who can be held responsible? To criticise or to blame the women themselves would be as senseless as to attempt a judgment upon the shore washed by the sea. It had to be and it was. The end had come for Victorianism, with its soul-crushing hypocrisy. The new Force had to be set free.

Most unfortunately the advanced feminists who took charge of the movement had few of the god-given gifts of leadership. There is but a step from revolution, with its healthy exaggerations, to complete anarchy. They sowed the seeds, and only the Great War—with its issues of life and death—has saved them and us from a terrible harvest.

(i.) The leaders’ first tactical mistake, no doubt, was to set up a fighting corps before the average woman had learned how to march. To realise with what unstable rapidity they forged ahead, we have only to measure the distance between the women of this generation and of the last.

History has always recorded the perils and suffering of any period that follows a too rapid emancipation of slaves; and as all Suffrage Societies alluded to women as slaves, we may adopt the comparison without offence. Our speed in settling the women’s question was no less than a crime. Women ought to have served a period as novitiates before taking the full vows of freedom.

For our mothers the gates were locked. Their narrow horizon was bounded—on the one side by the needle and on the other by children. They had, in return, the safety and the protection of a home. For the women of this generation most doors have been flung wide. But with the full liberty to work, they have gained also full liberty to starve; and they are finding themselves too often forced down paths they have not the physical strength to tread. Rights demanded without tact, and the unconsidered outcry for absolute equality, have largely killed men’s protective instincts, and really amount to a “declaration of war between those who should be allies or partners in humankind.”

Only a few women can go far, or last long, without a home, a pension, or a private income, to fall back on. Our mothers were “looked after” as a matter of course. So many women to-day are forced to work for themselves, however unqualified they may be. They have been given the Parliamentary vote, before even learning their municipal responsibilities. They have entered upon business careers without training or capacity. At the moment, indeed, one feels as if both the professional and the business worlds were actually clogged up with untried women.

How different the whole situation might have been if the leaders had been content to move more slowly; feeling their way as they went along; organising, experimenting, and helping—teaching the meaning of responsibility, what it involves and how to use it?

Above all, they should never have lost touch with the anchor of the home, until they were well able to navigate their own course in the variable currents of the world outside and secure not only work for an income, but some security for the future.

Independence, so called, that does not include economic provision for bad times and old age, is not independence at all. What problem can be more terrible or more grave for the great army of superfluous women, than the absolute insecurity of their future?

(ii.) The feminist leaders also made a very serious mistake when they based their demands for all women upon the needs of a very exceptional minority. “Take care of the weak part of your army,” said Napoleon, “the strong can look after themselves.” But in this movement it was the reverse policy which the leaders preferred to adopt. If a few workers had proved that despite obstacles, difficulties, and sex-prejudice, they could yet take their place in open competition with men, these giant personalities were exceptions that proved the rule. Why legislate for exceptions?

It was maintained, from the first, that all professions should be open to all women; that the sexes should be at once placed upon absolute equality. “What one, the finest of women, can do, all should strive to do,” was the theory. And we had dangerous legislation, suddenly introduced, which was doomed in advance to disaster; carrying with it deceptions, disappointments, the unclassing and unsexing of women. For one woman who can succeed at the bar or in surgery there are hundreds who had far better be sighing for the cradle. They will never reach the bar, or prove fitted to wield the knife; and they will lose the cradle into the bargain.

All the ages have brought forth exceptional women. At the time when Mahomet raised his voice in the desert, and was leading his dusky-skinned converts out of semi-barbarianism into the light of civilisation, his own daughter, the Lady of Paradise, was speaking and lecturing in many lands, so that her fame spread over the whole of the East. Yet other women were not encouraged to follow her example; and few made the attempt before the arrival of Zeyneb, the famous professor of Damascus.

Yet in our own days, that woman might undertake man’s work, she was given the vote. It was held up, and fought for, as the key to unlock all professional doors—the instrument of the Millennium! It is true, of course, that the vote can, and perhaps will eventually be of great utility. But how can we judge? It is as yet scarcely out of its swaddling clothes; and, certainly for women, the promised Millennium is still far to seek.

(iii.) The final, and most disastrous mistake of the feminist leaders was their entire disregard of Nature herself. It is by this means that the whole movement has been developed on a false premiss; for any overdrafts on the bank of Nature must be repaid with crushing interest.

“Only the vote can right all wrongs,” said the leaders, “and as men used violence to obtain the vote, women must do the same. Men pillaged, burnt, destroyed; did evil that good might come. We must follow their example.” There is no real logic in such a claim. A woman simply cannot apply man’s weapons. Men who riot use fair violence against other men; whereas when women use violence against men, they gain an unfair advantage. When two men fight, it is the stronger who prevails; against women no man can strike the death-blow that is in his hands, lest he violate the most sacred laws of his manhood.

The only “force” a woman may fairly use against men is to know what she wants and sit tight until she obtains it. It is, we admit, a slow process, but it is sure and certain—in fact the only way.

What has woman, in fact, gained by violence? Since man considered she had not given him a square deal because he could not counter her violence by his own, he used the only weapon available—complete indifference. Instead of meeting man as an associate, woman became his enemy and his commercial competitor. As we shall later attempt to prove, woman is not so constituted, either physically or emotionally, that she can compete with men. Wherefore the loss is hers.

The attitude of distrust, or at least indifference, thus created in man necessarily reacts on him. It was responsibility towards his womenkind that gave him a regular outlet for his chivalry and the moral backbone he would otherwise have seldom maintained.

The lack of organisation in woman’s fight for independence has injured not only herself but man.

II
THE DRAWBACK OF HEALTH

One sometimes wonders whether, if more time had been given in schools to the study of physiology, women would have been tempted to enter upon physically exhausting careers.

When we examine the complicated but delicately-made workmanship of the female body, compared with the simple robustness of the male, we must seriously consider whether Nature intended women for their present work.

People have argued and will always argue that we have women who are stronger than men. This we do not deny; but the whole conformation of a woman’s body goes to prove that she is not fitted for heavy physical work, whatever her mental capacity may be.

Thus it is that all the controversy about the abolition of a Woman’s Police Force, (which never existed), makes one wonder why a body of Welfare Workers, as they really are, should want to be called Police, when they are unable to protect themselves, far less to arrest a man. Think what a blow in a woman’s chest may mean! Or a kick! Or a chill at the wrong time!

But here again, we have the advanced feminists attempting to spoil a very valuable “welfare” cause, by forcing women down a road which they are not fitted by Nature to tread. More than this, they can only succeed as “welfare” workers, when the police become interested in their work and will protect them, if necessary, whereas now they annoy the whole force by taking the title and uniform of a profession they cannot safely adopt.

This is how a policeman summed them up. “God forbid that I should ever want to prevent a woman from earning her living; but it gives a fellow a kind of degraded feeling to be asked to take any woman into the immorality of Hyde Park at night.” So ought every policeman to feel, and the whole raison d’être of his profession goes, when he has to share it with women.

When the Great War came, woman had the unique experience of trying her hand at all work, from the land to the railway station and the omnibus, and from the counting-house to the Civil Service. She could then judge men’s work first-hand. There were no men for the hard fetching and carrying, so that she had to do it herself. The general opinion has been that she proved a remarkably good stop-gap; but only a stop-gap. The most intelligent women workers have recognised and owned this.

During the War, too, there was always the patriotic ideal to help one along. Could so many have toiled day and night had they not ever ringing in their ears the eternal refrain, “I am helping to win the War, I am doing my bit.” It is not just to criticise, then, women who worked with a zeal and self-abnegation for which some of them will have to pay, physically and morally, till the end of their lives. At the same time, when women ask to be judged for their war-work according to men’s standards, they are playing the game of the little frog in the fable who tried to measure himself against the ox, and they will suffer as he did.

And who amongst us has forgotten the physical strain for even the strongest women? During the war, the bus women used up their strength and their nerves. They were so over-wrought that a cross word would produce a torrent of wrath, and one spoke to them as seldom as possible. Yet the work is no more strain on a man than eating his breakfast.

How can any one pretend that such war-work suited the women? I remember a woman porter who took charge of a suit case for me that few men would have found heavy, but which I myself could not carry. The pale-faced porteress soon became too exhausted for such a load. So I gave her a large tip and kind words in exchange for her insults; and under the influence of this unexpected kindness, she burst into tears. Were not most of our workers in a similar state of nervous prostration? Then there seemed no option; but looking at the havoc that was thus wrought upon women’s health, one wonders whether it would not have been better to have imported coolies or blacks.

And where is the contractor who will pay for woman’s work at the same figure as man’s? In the labour market women must always be a poor speculation from the physical point of view, and so, when equal work means equal pay, the man, for whom there is less physical risk, secures the job. Woman must undercut man, which is economic suicide.

In office life too the routine work proves a great strain. Women start off so full of zeal. They overwork, as they love and hate and take exercise, always to excess. And the flame of youth quickly burns itself out. German doctors have always advocated that to assure safety in middle age every woman, whether she thinks she requires it or not, ought to have two complete days’ rest a month. But how many can afford this? and what would their employers have to say?

And who does not know how easily a woman’s health is wrecked by poor or insufficient food? Argue and warn as one may, no woman who has to choose between clothes and food would choose food. She cannot, clothes being a business asset. In short, since we are summing up the disadvantages of women’s work, it must be admitted that the question of health is her chief handicap—a handicap which often puts her altogether out of the race.

In the days of primitive men and women, they divided their work, as it were, by instinct. He hunted the wild beasts; she cooked them and looked after the little savages in the tent. Neither attempted the other’s task, and yet to-day, with all her physical disqualifications, woman is often forced to do the work of both.

Indeed, the whole situation seems to have been reversed. Very few women are really qualified to succeed in men’s professions, yet often they persist in trying until they break down, whereas it is doubtful if there is one part of a woman’s work that men cannot do as well, if not better than women—though they seldom care to try! That is to say, though men may not be good, all-round house-keepers, they are better at special jobs. As a tailor, a servant, a chef, a masseur, a hairdresser, a dressmaker and sometimes even in the care of babies, they are better specialists than a woman. In the United States, Chinamen are found to make excellent nurse-maids.

When I was crossing the Atlantic during one of the worst storms of the year, a British officer took charge of his baby in a fashion that won universal admiration. Every woman on board, including his wife, was ill; so the father powdered and bathed, combed and fed the little thing; yet, when questioned, he owned he had never done anything of the kind before, or even watched the operation.

How many outstanding women painters, musical composers or doctors, can we name? In the theatre, where she can keep her sex and give full sway to her emotions, woman reigns supreme; though even here sometimes, at the expense of health.

Entirely without disloyalty, one must emphatically declare (for the statistics of the war are on record to prove it) that, for physical reasons alone, we cannot rely on women to replace men in professions, in the business world, nor as land-workers. They can, very successfully, supplement men and, temporarily, replace them, but their physical strength quickly gives way and their reign must of necessity be short.

Then why not give our first consideration to health? Why attempt work for which we are not physically fit?

In the administration of prisons, hospitals, and work-houses, as poor-law guardians and, above all, in the home, women can render invaluable service. It seems a thousand pities for them to neglect these spheres for others where they are too often foredoomed to failure.

III
BARRED FROM THE PROFESSIONS

Taking professional careers as a speculation, i.e., carefully counting the outlay and what it is likely to bring in, can we deny what a University woman once said: “With training at one British and at two foreign universities, and all our degrees, as well as dancing, singing, music, painting, riding and other accomplishments, should we not have been, so far as actual monetary gain is concerned, better off had we learnt to stick labels on jam-pots?”

Look what a barrister’s education costs, and yet “briefless barristers” amongst men are the rule, not the exception. Hear what young barristers have to do and put up with until they can get their chance. Remember that some have to leave the thorny road without securing even a chance. For men, the Bar is a great career fraught with passionate interest, but bristling with disappointments. The prizes are few and far between. What then has taken woman along that most difficult of difficult ways? Is it a real love of the profession? Or is it a vain desire to be amongst the first interesting few? Has she any real chance of success at the Bar?

Some people are inclined to think women ought to be able to plead for their own sex better than men—but can they? Have they the sound logic of the man barrister? Is not his fox-craftiness, cynicism, and self-possession more necessary than the fund of emotion which is her trump card? Perhaps the very qualities she is relying on to win her case will lose it. It must be a long while before women can make a name for themselves at the Bar, for only super women will ever get briefs. “We trust women doctors with our lives,” it is said. “Yes, but you trust the woman lawyer with your purse!”

From the first, Mlle. Miropolsky, the brilliant Polish-French barrister, herself a woman of unusual intelligence, very wisely placed a rich barrister husband between herself and the financial side of life. In any case, both have exceptional personalities, and are leaders in their profession.

But would anyone in their senses consider the Bar as a suitable provision for the average woman?

In Medicine, though physically hard on women, and despite the cost of the long years of training, there is more chance of success. To begin with, the East can utilize a great many women doctors, and in the medical mission field they have proved their unique worth. Yet in spite of the war, sex-prejudice has not vanished, and only women of exceptional personality can keep a practice together. And despite all that has been said or written to the contrary, it will be long before this prejudice disappears. Her sex is against women here as in so many other fields of endeavour. When one recognises how much personality and capacity public opinion demands from a woman doctor, and how all her little slips are multiplied a thousandfold, one sees that medicine can only be a stop-gap, and that the experiment is indeed costly.

In the early days, suffragettes quoted the father who said: “Had my girl been a boy, I would have risked the money and put him in practice; but, with my limited income, that would be too much to ask me for a girl.”

As an investment, medicine for women is very risky. When the career is completed, a practice has to be bought. How is her health to stand the strain? Has she enough courage and personality to keep up her practice? Surely most fathers would do better if they used the money to purchase an annuity instead of spending it on training.

Another great drawback to the woman doctor is the refusal of other women to trust her judgment. As a confessor, where above all one would have prophesied her success,—and every doctor is to a certain extent a confessor—she often fails. Is it lack of heart and of understanding, or simply of savoir-faire? The fact remains, however, that a large number of women, seeking the mental help that a doctor so often gives, would unburden themselves more readily to a man.

When a man and a woman, both doctors, work together, the partnership is generally a success, and not only among married couples. The friendship of mutual interests, where no love comes in, often raises both to great heights of purpose, and achieves much that is conspicuously worth while. If one, or both, are married, so much the better.

The solitary, spinster-practitioner can have no secretary in her work. In partnership the strain is diminished for both, and the patients feel much greater confidence with a man in the background.

The two professions for which, at any rate in the past, no special training was required, are journalism and the stage. In these professions competition is fiercest. It is not always the best written work which pays; it is not the most talented actress who wins public applause. There are hundreds, however, who love the excitement of trying to find even a tiny corner of their own in these streets of adventure, and they are ready to go through fire to secure it.

The University of Columbia, U.S.A., has now a Chair for “Journalism,” which shows the value of training in this profession. Paris has a Conservatoire where all their artists are trained, free of charge, after admission by open competition. The preliminary work thus entailed, however, does not in the least diminish the keen competition that we must expect in professions which hold the chance of such big possibilities. Yet once more, for both, good health is absolutely indispensable. The harassing strain of uncertainty plays havoc with the finest constitution, and the public, out for amusement and interest, has no time for waning or fallen stars.

The fact is that women are only fitted constitutionally for certain kinds of journalism. The office night-work is too exhausting, and the path of the War Correspondent is one no woman should seek to tread. There are insurmountable difficulties all the way, and, speaking from personal experience, I am convinced that she can only pull through at all by throwing herself on the chivalry of men. In the French army, officers were seriously punished for uselessly exposing men’s lives; yet in order to furnish the sensational head-line of “A Woman in the Trenches,” fathers of families had to risk their lives to protect her, to my certain knowledge, over and over again. It ought not to be allowed.

In the early Victorian era, teaching and nursing used to be the two professions for women. They were both badly paid, and if the school teacher had little or no prestige, the governess had none at all. Nursing was and is still done in hospitals for a pittance; private work is better paid, but the women who do it tell me they dislike the profession.

Both teaching and nursing are, however, vocations, and girls who only take them for want of something better, do not, of course, give their best. Yet no work requires women of more solid character. They have at their mercy, to make or to mar, the young and the sick, yet candidates for these professions cannot be chosen. Neither nursing nor teaching, taken seriously, is a sinecure, and again robust health is required for both.

In the arts, i.e., music, painting and literature, training is not enough, and since men have not only to be put on their feet but “seen through,” women must also be “seen through.” Genius, generally speaking, will find its public, but the arts too frequently mean that lessons are given for bread and butter. From both the artistic and financial aspect, however, one wonders whether such poor results are really worth while. Things have naturally been much worse since the War.

The hand-to-mouth, Quartier Latin or Chelsea Studio existence is all very well as a stop-gap, for a change or even a picnic; but what of the future? When is the woman paid enough at this work to save for her old age. It simply cannot be done. There is Florence Barclay, it is true, who made more than enough for a life-time with one book—and there are other exceptions. But these are rare enough to be called miraculous.

In the Middle Ages, teaching and nursing were done by nuns. They gave their lives to the community; and the community cared for them—in sickness, unto death. Nowadays, if women still give their lives to the community, a lay community, the community (or the State) must see that they never want.

Considering the strain of teaching, the terrible risks of nursing, and the uncertainty of women being strong enough to pursue their work after middle age, they ought not to be left dependent upon any profession that does not carry with it the security of a pension; unless, indeed, they are well insured, and, for greater safety, insured by the State.

A profession cannot be abandoned and then picked up again for rainy days. A woman will come back, as men have, to find herself out of date, out of the running. She is not wanted; her place is taken by younger women.

In every profession—the Bar, Medicine, Teaching, Nursing, or Journalism, woman is hindered by her physique. It is idle to contend with the statistics which prove how many women between forty and fifty break down seriously, and never get fit again. Even in partnership with men, where all the risks are obviously diminished, they must be sure of provision in case of sickness. Most professions are good ladders but bad crutches. Under the present conditions of destructive competition, they too often prove no more than an expensive hobby.

IV
THE FRENCH BUSINESS WOMAN

From long residence on the Continent I have been able to study at first hand that admirable person the Frenchwoman in business. What a power is hers! What would France be without her!

There is certainly no need nor any intention to undervalue Frenchmen; but in France one sees woman in her right place, holding the balance of power that follows most closely Nature’s obvious design. There, on the one side, is man performing the hard physical labour which he alone is wise to attempt; on the other, his partner, woman, with her clear business judgment, advising, supervising, suggesting, persuading: never allowing herself to be carried away by sentiment, but always looking facts in the face. A very tiger over her own offspring, she would sell her own soul—or anyone else’s—to save her children; and for that reason must be met with extreme caution by the foreigner. Her personal judgments nevertheless are always based on clear-headed common-sense.

Wherefore, despite her large army of mateless women, France will never be faced with the “women’s question,” as we know it. Women in France are, to a large extent, independent of public opinion: they do not fear facts.

Any ideal of “single-blessedness” would not appeal to them. “It is neither practical nor natural; why therefore should we pretend otherwise?” We question indeed if English women are quite sincere in this matter. “It is better,” they say, “to be alone than with the wrong man.” “A strange ideal,” answers Madame, “how do you know that he is wrong until you have tried?”

As the French believe, whatever work a woman may undertake, she must be man’s associate and partner; neither his subordinate nor his rival. Wherefore she gives her daughter a professional, or business training; and above all, money. A shopkeeper’s daughter generally marries her father’s most promising assistant. The business becomes a sort of double partnership, and most of these marriages prove quite satisfactory. So if a girl’s father is in the army she generally marries an officer; if a banker she will choose a man in a bank. It is a practical family arrangement seldom leading women out of their own class. The disastrous sort of “The Earl and the Girl” affair, so familiar to us, could scarcely ever take place in France.

It is true that France has now a large army of mateless women, but the greater number are widows. As widows they are either carrying on the family business, working in government posts, or living with their parents. Few, of their own choice, would set up alone for themselves.

In their eyes the English woman seems always struggling with “so much work for such small results:” driven to occupations for which she is not properly equipped. They would never expect or permit their own daughters to face the material insecurity which few of our women workers can avoid. Here they may swim, more often they sink. The Frenchwoman says, “swim by all means if you can, but first make sure that you never sink.” A profession or a business is not enough. The girl must have a home or money. Mothers who cannot provide all three will at least insist on one.

Even a short residence on the Continent will suffice to show us what sacrifices all Frenchwomen are prepared to make in order that the “daughter” may never find herself in the humiliating position of having no money behind her, whether she marries or not. I knew, for instance, a doctor who was killed in the war before his daughter’s dowry had been saved up. The widow at once let her furnished house, and took the position as housekeeper in a school. She is living on her husband’s pension; the rest is put by for the girl. This of course is only one example out of a thousand. The woman thinks no work beneath her, or too heavy to undertake for her daughter’s future. Public opinion accepts her sacrifice as a mere matter of course. It is her duty.

As a matter of fact, however, our snobbish attitude towards shop-keepers is unknown in France. The woman who sees that she can do better at business than in a profession, goes into business. As a rule she succeeds in both, because she will sink her personality and take up the position in which she is needed most, whatever her qualifications for better work. An expert at embroidery, bodice-making, or hair-dressing will devote her life to keeping the books of the family business for the good of the firm. The woman doctor may be sighing to make her name as a surgeon or oculist; but for the good of the practice she will readily give her mind to research work, or, if her husband is also a doctor, to writing his lectures. Her whole career may have its course changed, but she remains content.

Moreover, the Frenchwoman never forgets, or ignores, her real object—permanent security. They are a race of cautious investors, who will invest almost everything they possess to put a child on his feet. They will not make him a clerk, always subject to dismissal; a secretary, always looking for better posts. They put capital, however small, into his business to establish him there.

It is for this reason that, at the boot-makers, dress-makers, milliners, and elsewhere, you so continually meet the familiar faces. The assistants, whether married or not, keep their jobs until they can face the world with a fixed income. A few English, and more Americans, make larger fortunes, it is true; but how many of us would have the patience to “heap up” franc by franc, the security which is the great aim of every Frenchwoman.

Comparisons are odious, but we certainly have much to learn from the French business woman.

V
THE LAWS FOR WOMEN—ILLOGICAL AND INCONSISTENT

How strange it is that Englishwomen, who enjoy a liberty of action their sisters on the continent regard with envy, should yet be governed by a code of laws as inconsistent as they are unjust. From this code were taken the chief planks of the Suffrage platforms.

Though the feministic appeal was made first to unhappy, or dissatisfied women, it was easy to rouse righteous wrath in all by dwelling upon the cruel laws to which women in this land are subjected.

Tell a woman that “by the law you are not the legal parent of your child,” and who could not secure a majority by such an appeal?

When the “master” is good and kind, the position of wife, mother, or daughter may be quite satisfactory. When, however, a woman is thrown into the grip of these cruel laws, then Heaven have mercy on her!

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, because they might otherwise have been more quickly reformed, Englishwomen have, to protect them, the Englishman’s own self-made code, really of more effect than any law:—simply, “It isn’t done.” Every British gentleman bows to the great judge, Public Opinion. Alas, however, every Britisher is not a gentleman, and again one asks: “What chance has a woman when left to the mercy of the laws of the realm?” Even the Moslems, who are not supposed to credit women with the possession of a soul at all, have more consistent and just laws than ours, and, what is of the greatest importance, children are always given a legal status.

It is astonishing that the British gentleman, the world-renowned sportsman in the very highest sense, can stand not only for the wrongs that are done to unmarried mothers, but worse still, for the wrongs done to the poor defenceless beings who come into the world unasked, and yet suffer all their lives for what has not been in any way their own fault. Considering the real nature of that very fine being, the British gentleman, and a finer than he does not exist on this earth, in comparison with the men of every other land, one wonders whether, after all, his attention has ever been properly drawn to this injustice.

The laws are so out of harmony with all the “fairplay” for which he stands. First, taking woman as a wife. There are far too few obstacles to prevent her marrying in haste, and far too many, since these hasty marriages are allowed, to prevent her unmarrying. One cannot, perhaps, altogether approve of the Continental arranged marriage, but there is certainly something to be said for the wisdom of a system that demands the parent’s or guardian’s consent up to the age of twenty-five. At least it puts off the “evil day”; and gives the families on both sides time to act. Both family histories, and both family banking accounts are carefully examined; and, in most cases, the State ceremony and service in church combined are calculated to impress upon young people the solemnity of the partnership into which they are about to enter, and the interests of the future generation it will be theirs to safeguard.

Compare these carefully arranged marriages with some of our slipshod, ill-considered unions, based on pure physical attraction which naturally cannot last!

If neither the State, nor the parent, will—or can—do anything to prevent hasty marriage, why should the laws for Divorce be so consistently illogical. They are not only illogical, but disgracefully unfair. In Italy there is no divorce—neither the Church nor the State grants it—so the situation is quite clear; both sexes are treated alike.

In France, the State, not the Church, grants divorce for men and women on equal terms; that, too, is fair.

In England, however, the divorce laws do not help the right class of men and women, and release is not granted to women on equal terms with men.

A frivolous-minded couple, who have rushed into matrimony without a thought, and have very quickly had quite enough of one another, can go through the usual “restitution of conjugal rights” comedy—disgraceful legislation, unworthy of our traditions.

It is the wife of a criminal lunatic or a confirmed drunkard who has our pity. For her, or the woman tied to a thoroughly immoral man who tries to lead the sons astray, there should be permanent relief. Judicial separation is not a sufficient protection for the children.

No thinking woman wants easier divorce or anything to loosen family ties and lead to legitimatised “free love.” But even devout Roman Catholics are now prepared to “use scissors” for the protection of children. Handicapped by nature, often the victim of circumstances, the unmarried mother is always to be pitied. Although she has the advantage over the married woman in being the legal parent of her child, yet for her public opinion is merciless. From the father of the child, when she can prove who he is, she gets a mere pittance; and if, driven to distraction and temporary insanity, she puts an end to the little life that began with so much sorrow, she must stand alone in the dock. Without defending the woman—God forbid, a little life is too sacred!—one cannot help asking: “Where is the man?”

In summing up the disadvantages of being a woman, here is one of the greatest. Public opinion and the law defy nature, and by their cowardly unchristian attitude frequently drive poor erring humanity to the crime of infanticide.

Perhaps the German treatment of this problem is the most Christlike. Human nature being what it is, such things will happen; no legislation can stop them. Therefore, these children must be brought up as honest citizens, not as children of sin. The German “Mothers’ Home,” where no difference is made between the married and unmarried, is well worth a visit and might be imitated with advantage.

“For every sin there is pardon,” we repeat mechanically; and yet the British Code puts the awful scarlet letter of illegitimacy on defenceless children, and not even the marriage of the parents can wipe it out.

One of the most unjust of laws in this realm is that which allows parents to disinherit their children. On the Continent this cannot be done. Children are entitled to one-third of the parents’ possessions. However worthless, they are the parents’ “creations,” for whom the responsibility cannot be evaded.

It is true that some parents give away all they possess in their life-time in order to deprive the children of their inheritance. This is illegal, however, and punishable by the law.

There is something very mean in the attitude of parents who cut off their children with the proverbial shilling. They are often influenced by mere caprice, a marriage they dislike, or a change of religion. Yet whatever a child has done, is this justifiable? And surely a daughter who acts in defiance of the wishes of her parents, needs them all the more when the predicted day of sorrow arrives. To disinherit a son is bad enough, but to disinherit an unmarried daughter is criminal.

The case of the daughter who does not marry in order to look after her widowed father and suddenly finds herself penniless because the new wife will not let him provide for her, could not happen on the Continent. Over and over again one has met these poor victims. Well over thirty-five, and yet just starting to work. How can parents be so heartless?

On the Continent there is, at least an unwritten law which forces a brother to look after his sister. No one likes to accept charity from a brother, yet Continental public opinion deals harshly with the man who deserts his mother and sisters in their time of need. It is more lenient to those who neglect their wives; children and one’s own flesh and blood, however, seem somehow to have a closer claim.

A good brother is the dearest possible pal. And what a difference his mere existence makes sometimes in the attitude of his sister’s male employer. Yet, as many Englishwomen must admit, their brothers are scarcely aware of their existence. There has been no quarrel, but they do not even correspond; he has married and has new interests. The companion of his childhood is a memory that cannot even be kept alive by a postcard.

Brothers know perfectly well, or if they do not know they ought to be told, that woman’s value as she grows older decreases in the labour market. They have become so used to sisters helping themselves when they are not married, or badly married, that they lose interest: influenced, in some cases, maybe, by a jealous wife. How bitter the heart-ache of many a “Maggie Tulliver” at the indifference of “brother Tom.”

None can deny the injustice of these English laws. It was said that they would never be changed until women obtained the vote. As no thinking worker could uphold such crushing, humiliating, and dangerous laws, they worked whole-heartedly for the Vote, and obtained it. Yet the laws have not yet been changed. It was then maintained that the Vote was not enough, women must sit in the House of Commons.

What have they done in the House of Commons?

VI
CAN WOMEN SUCCEED IN POLITICS?

Can women succeed in politics? It is, perhaps, too early to say. Suddenly some giant personality may give the lie to all that could be said against woman as a politician.

Meantime, who but Lady Astor could have been the first woman M.P.? Who but a woman of her social position, wealth, and personality could have secured the reception accorded her by the House of Commons? And who but a woman—trained in America and as a Christian Scientist—would have had the courage to take up a work for which she was not educated; braving the criticism of the whole civilised world. But she has done it, and in spite of serious blunders at the beginning, she has done it remarkably well. When one remembers her demoralising wealth, that she had no business training at all, that she has to rely on her quick wit for speeches, one wonders what she might not have accomplished had she been through the professional mill.

But will she really help women at Westminster? Has she really their cause at heart? Can she understand them? Certainly she belongs to that fine school of American idealists who want to make great reforms. Only, to do these great things, you must understand them, and can she understand women’s needs, who has not herself been in need? She has a chance to help women, such as no one else has ever had, or may have again. Will she take it?

The cause of the working woman will always be well championed. Besides, the poor can beg; professional women cannot. On their way to independence some women have found sorrow and humiliation and suffering at every corner, but to whom will they ever confess?

Lady Astor was certainly not very successful in her attitude towards divorce. Had she studied the question sufficiently? Possibly not, and that was the reason. She supposed the thinking women of England were trying for easier divorce, not reformed divorce, and who could blame her for wishing to keep out of England the “easy divorce” laws of the U.S.A.

As a professional working woman, Mrs. Wintringham ought to be able to give the professional woman’s point of view with much more understanding than Lady Astor. Her speeches are commendably brief and to the point, but the public usually prefers personality and social standing to the highest, technical qualifications. It is, indeed, another very great point in Lady Astor’s favour that she has no axe to grind. The constituents who elected her because she is Lady Astor, will elect her again; whereas, with other woman candidates we have yet to find out whether they will put their own personal interests before their cause.

There was a time when one supposed women would clear up politics as they cleared up a dirty house. But are they more to be trusted in politics than men? A woman comes out of Labour ranks; as she gets on, she becomes socially ambitious, then she throws her party aside. Men have done it over and over again; they call it “evolution,” and women no doubt will say the same.

The few women who are likely to sit in the House of Commons can make very little difference to the constitution, and it might be wiser for women to use their vote for forcing men on to their side, and so making sure that their wishes are carried out with regard to Bills with which they are particularly concerned. Women and children’s laws need reform so badly; is it safe to rely on future women M.P.’s? It is true that we have not yet had any bills framed by women for women; they may be master-pieces of statesmanship. Let it be said meanwhile that at least they could not be worse than the existing man-made laws.

The danger of trusting women in politics, comes from their lack of esprit de corps, yet the very raison d’être of their being in Parliament is to protect and help other women; to uphold other women’s interests. But see how they run their clubs! No men’s clubs are conducted on such lines. The best of them cannot choke that Mothers’ Meeting spirit, which shows itself at the most unfortunate moments. And the meetings are often conducted in the most unsportsmanlike manner. Over and over again a woman in the Chair will close the meeting if the feeling is going against her party, or her speaker cannot answer questions.

Individual women are magnificent; but to trust them collectively is futile as yet. Either from ignorance or from something in woman’s nature, somehow or other she so often seems to let other women down. We have said that Lady Astor, if she really cares to understand the professional woman’s point of view, could be of the greatest service to the women’s cause.

Outside the House of Commons, however, the women’s cause has suffered a great deal from the rich and titled women who annex it as an interesting hobby, draw up impossible charters for women, hold drawing-room meetings, agitate and drive their hearers on much faster than they ever ought to attempt to go. As one of the victims said: “I wish she would talk less, and offer us instead a good meal.”

There is not this terrible gulf of misunderstanding between rich men and professional men. Not even a workman would have his interests meddled with by people who have neither the right nor the capacity to interfere. They would very soon send Lord X. about his business, if he addressed them as his wife once addressed a women’s meeting. Stretching her pretty Paradise-plumed head out of her magnificent sable furs, she said: “Twopence is quite enough to spend on a meal; one penny for a packet of pea soup powder, and one penny for margarine. It makes a most delicious soup. I give it to my guests.” The pearls she was wearing would have fed a whole community for a long time on a much more substantial menu than two penny-worth of pea soup.

Another lady of great wealth advised a typist, earning only one pound a week, and forced to live on bread and cheese with a cup of tea, to “cut out the tea; it is indigestible. One good meal of bread and cheese a day is excellent; that is my régime.”

What is the use of answering such cruel folly by talk of sisterhood and democracy? Are they not mere idle words? Have we advanced one step since Marie Antoinette asked her historic question, “Why are the poor crying because they have no bread; can they not eat cake?”

There is no more fascinating, or useful, study than Foreign Politics. See what a conscientious student can learn in its train—history, geography, foreign languages, the literature and the psychology of different races. Then comes the longing to visit foreign lands, to see and judge their civilisation, and to understand them through their art and music. What better League of Nations Study-circle can there be than this?

And now, when in spite of conferences and meetings and reunions, the great cry is “less Europe and more England,” is there any chance for a serious study of foreign policy? The papers give us less and less foreign news; and how then are we to stimulate the great cosmopolitan spirit which ought to awaken a new breath of life?

If only such women as Lady Astor would revive the political “Salon,” where the great statesmen of the world could meet and discuss the affairs of nations, they might surely accomplish more for humanity than as members of Parliament?

Those wise old French salonières who have passed into the realm of history, could no doubt have secured direct representation. They had no such desire—and therein showed their wisdom!

VII
SEX IN WORK

Some women workers are curiously inconsistent. They have declared that sex shall not on any account enter into the business world. They cut off their hair and dress themselves as nearly as they dare in men’s attire; yet they deliberately put a feminine label on their work.

Why the label? Is it lack of sex confidence, or is the work so weak that it must trust to that label and beg for mercy?

Take the title of “Women Journalists.” What does this suggest? Either an agency for supplying articles on dress or cookery, or a group of women banded together to demand their professional rights. As neither is meant, the term is misleading. And why should a journalist, whether man or woman, want to belong to any but a Society of Journalists?

It is the same with the Women Artists. Why the label? At the Leipzig Palace of Women’s Work in 1914, the work of one artist drew everyone’s attention, and presumably she was a woman, since the Society had taken her to its bosom. Her pictures of Berlin’s underworld were so powerful, that they gave birth to all kinds of important prison reforms. But what was she doing in that anæmic assembly? Kathie Kollwitz was her name.

Her idea in allowing her work to be labelled “woman” was to help other women. Alas, how often the Christian spirit achieves the precise opposite of its intention! Kathie Kollwitz’s work, rather than helping women, killed by its superiority any chance of appreciation others might have secured. The terms artist, writer, author, musician, actor, professor and doctor should be used for both sexes. Work must be judged regardless of sex, or it is not worth judging at all.

Yet however much we protest against the label, sex is there all the same. Lifeless work is sexless work. Sex is like fire, water, and the other vital things of life, a great power when properly dominated. At the same time its legitimate use in art, as in life, is too subtle a weapon to be flourished recklessly as we stumble over the rocks of progress.

In the world of workers, sex often makes difficulties in business relations. It is for men to judge exactly how a woman handles the men under her control. Towards other women she is often the hardest task-mistress, when not actually unkind and unjust. In her search after the tiny flaws in a piece of work, she loses the great spirit of the whole. Her values are wrong; for this reason it is dangerous to give average women the final word.

It has been said that men put up more readily with incompetence than women. But this is not quite the case. They are more patient and more indulgent, and they take the trouble to judge from all round. The most aggravating little imperfections may well be balanced by some sound practical efficiency which, in the business eye of an employer, cancels all other faults. He knows he cannot expect perfection, and is content.

Women are not so much exacting as unreasonable. With the exacting one can deal; but not with the unreasonable. In business the terms unreasonable and incompetent are synonymous. In time, no doubt, women will learn to take broader views of life and will acquire sense of proportion. The question of kindness to their own sex will thus adjust itself, but in the meantime only a very limited number of them are big enough to employ others: which obviously means much unnecessary suffering for the workers.

On the other hand, relations between men and women in business are not always easy. A woman may be allowed to take positions of such importance in the office that she will shake the whole foundations of business; which is obviously unwise.

On the other hand, a man will often take advantage of a woman in business and find her an easy prey, just as he makes a good bargain for himself with a less wide-awake rival, without any offence to his business conscience; or if, under the influence of a smile and pearly teeth, he make a bargain that he regrets when thinking it over, he will soon find a means for catching up the pretty incompetent. Sometimes, again, a feeling of pity for a woman fighting life’s battles leads him to do things for her he would never dream of doing for a man. Alas! how many business careers have been wrecked on the rocks of sympathy.

The much criticised impresario is not the only sinner. Wolves in sheep’s clothing are to be found in every walk of life, and the very harmless act of accepting a lunch from an employer may swing the business relations on to entirely the wrong footing. After that, it is too late.

A woman who has business dealings with men must train herself to be two personalities—official and private. The more she is accustomed outside the office to being her own sweet self, the more must she school herself to leave the charming female on the doormat, and convert herself into a shrewd business woman who wants all her wits about her to conclude a bargain.

The woman in business who allows a man to take any but a business footing with her, must lose, the odds being against her always. By not putting her foot down at once, she finds herself quickly out of things altogether, with no chance of return.

There are, of course, many trying feminine types in business. For example, there is the woman who wants to be treated with 18th century courtesy. When asked why he objected to women lecturers, a secretary of a big society replied: “We hate being discourteous, but we really have not time to meet women at the station, dine them, and look after them. A man looks after himself. You will say a woman ought to do the same. Well, she does not. You can’t let her. A woman’s a woman....”

A very distressing type of worker is the one who, having signed a contract, wants to get out of it directly a better offer is in sight. This happens too frequently. She knows very well a man would have to pay heavy damages for doing such a thing. So she plays the feminine note, and the employer is cornered. All he can do without scandal is to cut his loss and get rid of her as quickly as possible. But his whole attitude towards women becomes filled with distrust, and the innocent have to suffer in consequence.

Once women learn to work more as the associates of men, these uncomfortable questions of “sex” will necessarily to a large extent disappear. But at the present moment they must unfortunately fill a large space in any attempt to sum up the disadvantages under which women work.

VIII
IS FEMININITY AT A DISCOUNT?

Femininity is a disadvantage to the professional woman, first of all, because it is expensive, and secondly because it takes up too much time.

If the hours spent trying on dresses, hats and other items of the wardrobe were presented in the form of a bill, one may wonder how many feminine existences would have a life balance at all.

Some women make dress their life work, the planning of their clothes and going out to show themselves in them, dominating all else in their minds. While others, the workers, are sighing for just a little more time, mostly to keep themselves neat and tidy. Life does sometimes seem out of proportion.

The subject of dress in a professional woman’s life is a vexed problem. How is she to find time to attend to her wardrobe? A short while ago, I saw a woman at the club sipping hot water. She owned she was banting. “I’m getting fat,” she said, “too fat to be stock-size, and that would be a calamity. Where can I find time to wear any but ready-made dresses?”

Yet unreasonable as it is to wear lace cuffs, collars and blouses which require constant washing and ironing, what true woman would give them up? Laundry bills are too heavy, so these things have to be done at home, and the already long day must begin an hour earlier, probably at six instead of seven. And how much time is squandered sewing on buttons, mending, and other things. For a woman suffers when she feels all her garments are not in order; those unseen, as well as those seen. Whilst the man worker goes off to tennis, cricket or football on Saturday afternoons without a thought of the clothes to be mended for him by some female hand, the woman worker stays at home to do her tidying up herself.

Although the final result is often quite as satisfactory as when the work is done by a woman, there is something pathetic in the sight of a male using a needle. He holds his garments in such awkward, though mathematically correct, positions, and the table is his thimble. Nothing more quickly arouses the maternal side of a woman than the sight of a man with a needle. “Has he no woman to look after him?” is the question which comes instinctively. And, in the same way a chivalrous man will ask, “Has she no man to take care of her?” when he sees a woman wearing herself out in an office.

People may argue as they like; the old primitive division—man the hunter, woman the tent-keeper—is the natural order of things. Will the world’s mind really grasp any other? It is true that women workers are to be seen everywhere in England, but, as one witty woman said, “their real work has to be done out of hours.”

“However severe the orders given my servants to leave me to work undisturbed,” said Flora Annie Steele, “just when I am wondering how I can best kill off my hero, the cook comes in to tell me she has no lemon.” Such a thing would never happen to her husband were he the writer of books.

Another woman, the editress of a big woman’s paper, tells me she leaves home to this tune—“the pipe has burst,” “the gas is out of order,” “the ceiling is leaking,” and then more of these important items are sometimes communicated by telephone to the office during her busiest days. All this side of life, of course, is kept from a busy man. He has to think only of his work.

Knowing, as she does, the time that clothes take to keep in order, knowing that long hair means at least an afternoon to wash, and always constant attention, a feminine woman defies all reason and somehow makes time for these things. And so it is with the care of her house or flat. She could live in lodgings or have a corner in a hostel, but she cannot bear the atmosphere that is not of her own creation. She must therefore have a place of her own. The whole of her income probably goes on the upkeep of her home; she cannot afford a servant, she cannot even really afford a flat if she looked into the future as a man looks. But she will have it. From an outsider’s point of view, one wonders where the pleasure comes in. She begins the day by getting her own breakfast, and having worked in an office all day, she returns to shop and sweep and dust and sew, or to cook and wash up for friends when they come to spend the evening. “It’s silly, I know,” said a bachelor woman, “I’m always having to draw on my sleep capital, but I couldn’t stand “apartments,” and I’m not going to try.” Were women really intended to live in this way?

Seeing then the time that femininity absorbs in a woman’s career, can we not understand those who cast it aside for ever? They cut off their useless hair, buy substantial masculine boots with low, flat heels, and dress themselves as nearly as they dare in the comfortable, ugly fashions of men.

From the artistic point of view the result is often deplorable. It needs a brave woman to be seen in such clothing, except at a carnival; but for the work they have to do perhaps male attire is more consistent.

Such clothing, however, convenient as it may be, tends to unsex the wearer. No longer feminine, unable to be quite masculine, she becomes a neutral, and her real friends, male or female, are few and far between.

I shared a cabin, crossing the Atlantic, with one of these “neutrals.” Except for a very short skirt, her garments were all masculine until the evening when, remembering her original sex, she extracted some rings from a grandmother’s pocket somewhere in her nether garments, and at the same time allowed her femininity to go the length of wearing lace stockings, without ceasing, however, to don her major’s coat. Such a woman would probably never do any great good nor any great harm, and, supposing she had sex, it could easily be transmuted to her work.

This type, nevertheless, gets a perfectly square deal from a man employer. “With such a woman as a business associate or a secretary, I can treat her like a man,” said a member of Parliament.

Probably this type of woman would be excellent on a jury, even a jury to try a murderer. But to ask some women to sit on juries is next to a crime. It is not at all in their line of thinking. They would be much happier buying silk stockings and leaving this grim and complicated subject to men or to other women of tried experience.

In the question of juries we have another example of the part being made greater than the whole. For one woman who can be of any real use in a police court, a hundred are no good at such work, at least until they have learnt to be more just to their own sex, and more balanced in judgment. No woman should sit on a jury against her will.

Face to face with two million superfluous women, perhaps the “neutral” may offer a solution, who can tell? They work mechanically, like the bees, and judging the work, one forgets the worker.

But it was neither as a hybrid nor through any male mentality that Mme. Curie succeeded in helping her husband to discover radium. It was the feminine quality of her mind that was of such great value. And when he was killed in the most stupid of street accidents, that female mind became sterile until the day when she found a substitute for the great masculine mind at rest.

George Eliot, before she met George Lewis, was no more than a competent journalist. With the assistance of his mind she wrote Adam Bede. Without him, would her novels have ever been produced?

And the hybrid can never be good for the community. It may be convenient for us to ask women to give up their femininity, but the sacrifice is too great. It is marking her with the same gender as a table.

IX
PIN-MONEY WOMEN

After health, women’s great obstacle in work, comes the pin-money woman. There must be something fundamentally unnatural in a system that makes women disloyal to one another, yet it is pin-money women who are the hardest on those who must work.

When the proprietor of a girl’s magazine can obtain a Girton Honours student as editor for thirty shillings to three pounds a week; or when another University graduate, with five years linguistic training in Germany, France and Italy, will work in a Government office for three pounds a week, how is the woman who absolutely depends on her own efforts to compete with her? Thirty shillings is the price of a none too luxurious room in London, without a meal; it is, therefore, very wrong of qualified women with enough to live on, to accept three pounds a week. A competent woman secretary may be satisfied with one hundred and fifty pounds a year, because she has a handsome allowance from her father so that she need not live with her step-mother. She has two incomes. Work keeps her from getting bored and gives her a certain raison d’être. But it is her low salary that helps to kill all possibility of women’s work being taken seriously.

Apply for the post which Miss X. has given up for another hobby, and ask for a living wage. You will be stared at in amazement. “Miss X. with her exceptional qualifications did it for so much,” they say, “we must find another Miss X.”

How do pin-money women come into existence? And why do they increase? “It is useless having more than one or two daughters at home,” says the father of four daughters. “Supposing my daughter can earn only one hundred pounds a year, that will keep her in clothes and pin-money and save me that amount in allowance.” But her work cannot be considered either a career or an independence. She does not even supply her own “bread and butter,” whereas most of the salary of the serious worker goes on that alone.

The head of the house supposes, and continues to hope, that his daughters will marry, and his responsibility come to an end. With this in view, he thinks that a little office experience will do her no harm. It will teach her at least the value of money. And so, year in, year out, the army of pin-money women, marking time, make it more and more impossible for those who must work to earn their living. One sometimes wonders whether these pin-money women have any idea of the sorrow and hardship they bring to other women; only the wearer feels the shoe pinch. The amateur, who is not forced to work and can give it up at any time, so easily becomes slipshod. Hence arises the tendency to class even the best women’s work as amateur.

Amongst those who are making the professional woman’s career more difficult, we can now also count the Society women.

The number of Society women who, since the war, have pushed their way into literature, art, films and the business world, is bewildering. It frequently means that the poor girl, who naturally cannot compete with the beautiful and much advertised fine lady, has to serve as “ghost” and rewrite the Countess’s articles, for which she gets a mere pittance. The Countess is paid for her name: and the “ghost” must submit, as she knows that hundreds of other women are ready to take the work.

In business there may be nothing against a combination by which the Countess X supplies the capital and Miss X does the work. Men lend their noble names to help along financial schemes, and women may do the same, if only a fair share of the profits be allowed to the worker.

One must admit that nowadays many Society women are out to make money, and generally succeed, thus doing far less mischief than the pin-money women who are qualified to make money and yet work for a pittance.

There were days when the middle-class professional worker was considered the backbone of the nation. Are those days past?

Democracy, with its blundering fingers, has shuffled the cards so badly that it is difficult to see where things will right themselves. It is as useless to sigh for the days when a countess was a countess, and an actress an actress, and a worker a worker, as to weep for the fine men of England who are asleep amongst the Flanders poppies. No competent worker fears competition; lack of competition means stagnation. There is a great difference, however, between competition and under-cutting, which is what the pin-money women are systematically creating. Competition builds the edifice, under-cutting makes it fall. And no words are sufficiently harsh for the amateur worker who, to avoid ennui, does not hesitate to ruin her poorer sisters, actually lowering men’s wages in the process, and—indirectly—forcing more women into the labour market. There is great importance in the distinction between the woman who works in collaboration with her husband, and the woman who works to help keep the household. The latter is always a dangerous experiment, and one which often ends in the wife having to keep the whole house. When a woman is able to earn money, the man so easily falls into the habit of letting her do it, till gradually his efforts become slacker and slacker and he often leaves off working altogether. An energetic, wage-earning wife always demoralises a man.

An able-bodied man who allows his wife to keep the family is a poor being; yet in these days of women’s work, it is becoming more and more frequent, the energetic, clever woman attracting a weak, lazy type of man. Women ought to let men understand from the first that husbands are responsible for the family expenses. In the day of misfortune, of course, normal rules do not apply.

At the same time, the married worker may be as great an obstacle to the single woman as the pin-money woman. Under the shelter of her husband’s roof, she can do work for a comparatively low figure which must injure her less fortunate rival.

Work has been done from mere vanity! In fact, as one man said about his wife’s work: “One requires a really large income to be the husband of a literary woman.”

X
WHAT IS WRONG WITH MARRIAGE?

Pages have been, and always will be, written about love and marriage, or marriage without love, or even marriage as a profession. All the roads of romance lead that way, all sorrows spring from its wrong vibrations, or because it never came. Whatever may be written or thought to the contrary, marriage will always remain the woman’s vocation.

When one sees a worn-out, middle-aged, woman taking notes at some tiresome political meeting and knows that she still has to write her report before she can struggle home in the small hours of the morning, one asks: “What has she gained, morally or financially? Would she not be far better at the fireside mending stockings?”

We have set out, one by one, the disadvantages under which women labour in the different professions they have taken up. What, after all, is safer or better than matrimony?

Not, however, the matrimony of our grandparents, but matrimony on the basis of moral partnership.

In the past century, when the wife was a kind of head servant and obeyed the master without questioning his authority, matrimony ran on easy enough lines. Now, when modern woman has a distinct personality of her own, unless both husband and wife have a high sense of duty and a feeling of partnership in the family they have created, their home-life cannot be a success.

And yet, with all its imperfections, on what better arrangement can they co-operate?

We have admitted that exceptional women, with unusually good health, can succeed in the professions, but certainly the majority are, both physically and morally, best fitted for married life. All the emotional qualities of women, the worrying over details, the love of order, the forgive-and-forget process of training children, are home virtues. The qualifications for success in business are entirely different.

And, for our generation, noting the moral upheaval and depravity following the war, there was never a time when clear-thinking women of high principles were more needed in home-life. There was never a period when young men had more need of the one love that will never betray them—the mother love.

We in England have so much that could never be found in France, but we now need to learn a few lessons from France with regard to family life.

Most unfortunately, the literature of France seldom depicts French home-life. Frenchmen read novels that, in frank contrast to their lives, scoff at marriage and extol adultery. Are we not, alas, following in the same tragic footsteps? It is more tragic for us, for we have not the same critical balance. Sentimental natures like ours do not reflect, and thus easily digest the tainted food which the French are critical enough to analyse. Those who have lived in France know that the Frenchman loves his home. It is his one ambition to have a home and family, and for this ambition he can depend on encouragement and support from all.

The English marriage system may be idealistic, but is it practical? The French system, with the bride’s dowry, has often been criticised and condemned, but there can be no question that on the whole it is far better for the bride. It is said that in France a man marries a woman for her dowry; which is sometimes true. Here, however, he often cannot marry for lack of it, which is worse. Just one or two hundred pounds a year which the French mother begins to collect when the daughter is born, and scarcely misses herself, would hardly tempt mercenary suitors, yet it makes all the difference to the girl. The provision of a dowry is rightly considered a sacred duty. To allow a daughter to marry without something of her own is looked upon as a disgrace, and even the poorest concierge finds the wherewithal for her girl’s dot.

But apart from the fact that this small standby is an encouragement to early marriage, it raises the wife to the position of a “partner,” and as a partner she naturally has a right to know exactly how the household works. “I haven’t the least idea what my husband’s position is,” English wives have said. “I spend my allowance, but perhaps I ought not—who knows?” Imagine her feelings if her husband should suddenly announce that he is a bankrupt. She has contributed without knowing to the general useless expenditure. That could never happen in France where the woman takes her full share of management.

The French system differs from ours because money is given at the time of the daughter’s marriage instead of at the parent’s death, when it is often only half as valuable as it would have been in early life. Either the couples have married and set up for themselves, struggling along in a crippled way for want of a little extra money, or the young man, not daring to risk life for two on his first earnings, has married less happily than he would have done in earlier manhood.

Above all, a sense of humiliation prevents many women from marrying. Rather than be utterly dependent on a man, they prefer to work for themselves. “You feel so cheap taking a salary as if you were a housekeeper.” In a struggling or unhappy marriage, where too often the man resents every penny he doles out, the position is heartrending for a woman. Some, ashamed of not contributing to the home and unable to make ends meet out of their small allowance, supplement it by adopting a profession. This may help, but as already suggested, it often leads to all sorts of complications.

Girls should be encouraged to marry young, though not too young. It is dangerous for them to have gone too far on the road of independence, for success may make them so “difficult” in their choice that they wait too long and do not bother to marry at all. The Turkish proverb: “Friendless still he remaineth who demands a perfect friend,” may prove a wise warning in the matter of choosing a husband.

In an Empire like ours, where many of our young men have to emigrate, and cannot afford to take a wife out with them, there would be many obvious advantages in some system of dowries.

No French mother would let her son go to the end of the earth without a wife to look after him. She knows, “it is not good for man to be alone.” Nor does she relish the idea of daughters left to “wither on the virgin thorn.” Perhaps, even, she considers the daughter’s case more seriously than the son’s. For she has made up her mind that matrimony is not only the most natural, but the only path for a woman, and she leaves no stone unturned to bring about a marriage. Friends help, the family confessor helps; the conspiracy is an open secret, and no one thinks any the worse of her for her scheming.

Perhaps the best and happiest marriages are those arranged by brothers. When a girl marries her loved brother’s best friend, it is the safest way of making assurance doubly sure.

Between the too cautious system of the French and our careless methods, there ought to be a happy mean. We have been arguing by extremes. Could we not compromise and secure the advantages of both methods?

We have advocated early marriage. We who love children know what it means for them to have young parents. Early marriage, however, is a danger, unless the family ties are tightened. Would Englishmen and women ever take their mothers into their confidence, and act on advice, as the French do? Yet every great virtue has its own defects, and very often the Frenchwoman’s great love for her son will tempt her to cripple his best interests both in marriage and in his career. She may spoil his career by keeping him in France where he does not obtain either experience or promotion. She may force him to marry “well” when his heart is elsewhere, though an understanding and unselfish mother generally chooses a better wife than he would have found for himself.

There was a time when every Englishman scorned the idea of a dowry. Now, though not actually applauding the system, they do fall in love more easily with the daughter of rich parents, and, in these hard times, who can blame them? A woman naturally resents being married for money; but we have never seen any signs of rejoicing in those who have been left penniless in the hands of the best husband. That is more humiliating, not less.

The greatest advantage of the French system, which provides something for both husband and wife, is that a young couple can marry, and their children will have the immense advantage of young and healthy parents. How, in these hard times for professional men, can one of these afford to marry before he is nearly forty, and this often results in his wife being left a young widow with a family, the children without the moral and material support of the father when he is most needed.

It is only a small sacrifice that these French parents make in slowly and steadily saving money for their daughters, and it seems incredible that for want of similar unselfishness, this country should eventually abound, as it must, in destitute women.

XI
THE FUTURE

What is to be the Future of the army of two million superfluous women?

We maintain that, with few exceptions, the vocation of women is matrimony. But where are all these two million to find husbands? Certainly not in England.

From time to time, the papers are full of the need for women in our colonies:—Rhodesia, Western Canada, or Australia. But does such a need really exist? Why cannot some thoroughly competent and trustworthy woman be sent out on a mission to these places—as the Daily Mail quite recently sent one of its men representatives—to investigate, and produce a reliable report of all the facilities for emigration? It is idle and dangerous to pursue such ideas blindfold: we need exact figures and precise facts.

If there is work in the colonies for our women, why not send them out? If there are men there wanting wives, the rest will follow as a matter of course.

When we read what the first Puritan colonists of America endured and suffered, and how the women battled along beside them, we need feel no fear of what Englishwomen can do when put to the test. In the fight for home and children woman stands out supreme. Who knows what a marvellous tale of love, adventure, and real heroism, a new exodus might call forth? But we must know the truth. Are women really needed in the colonies, or are they not?

Every woman has the right to some goal in life. She was not born to vegetate; and where the vocation of husband and children is lacking, a field of sufficient interest to absorb her whole life must be found. What about the Church? Or some other form of work in the service of Humanity?

Every student of human nature knows that great insatiable longing of one being for the special sympathy of another, the two making one perfect whole. The Roman and Anglican Churches have expressed this instinct under the simile of Christ the bridegroom and the nun or sister, His bride. This Union between God and man is perhaps the only one that can replace the wonderful exclusive tie between a man and a woman. How many women who buried their “one man” in the battle-fields of France, have found their consolation in Heavenly Union and taken refuge from the world in the service of humanity with the protection of the veil?

In Protestant England, however, the convent does not mean what it means in Latin countries, yet England assuredly needs women to labour for the certain benefit of their sex. She wants another St. Theresa, without her delusions. But where is she? Certainly not in the ranks of the women who would drive us to the Bar and the House of Commons. Nor amongst those who would send us back to crochet in our mother’s drawing-rooms.

Help must come from the religion of practical service; and who knows whether if women once gain a broader and saner outlook, they would not do fine and noble work in the pulpit. They must be chosen, of course, with the greatest care, or more harm than good will be done.

If only there were more of us like Miss Maud Royden, a broad-minded, deep-thinking, human woman, who can do only good wherever she goes.

We do not want the “shrieking sister” type. We want women who will preach that human nature is neither foul nor base, but a noble, beautiful thing; that men and women are neither angels nor beasts, but just men and women in sore need of help.

The non-conformist Church, too, should make room for more women in its foreign missions; and what a fine field there is for the trained nurse as Florence Nightingale conceived her. To-day the mere ‘paid’ nurse is a different being altogether, with few, if any, of the qualities of the pioneer. Too often she is neither working in God’s service to relieve suffering, nor straining her mind and strength to learn the laws of health. Florence Nightingale’s religion was her work. But where are her disciples now?

Nevertheless, there is a practical side to the Service of Humanity. It simply cannot be done without organisation and support. The “Sisterhood” provides this. Sister Leonie, working day and night in the St. Lazare prison, Paris, could not be tortured by the material worries of daily life. What a waste of effort that would have been, disturbing the work of service as she prays with and comforts her penitents.

Everywhere, in fact, and whatever their work or their mission, provision for the Future must prove to be Women s real problem. At present there is no sphere open to her in which the returns are substantial enough to allow of saving. Those who feel the Call may be freed from such anxieties; but where there is neither a home nor an income to depend on, in business or professions that do not carry with them an adequate pension, some kind of insurance must be devised by the State.

This is obviously a big question needing most careful thought. To-day, indeed, we must feel serious doubt whether women can place any real dependence even on the home and the family. Times are hard, and society is unstable. At any moment revolution or anarchy may sweep away, through no fault of our own, whatever provision the most prudent of us have been able to make.

There can, therefore, be no doubt that the Economic Insecurity among women is a grave problem. It may lead anywhere—to suicide, immorality, or crime. The matter is too serious for delay. All single women who have passed the age of thirty should now be included in some scheme of National Insurance. The other disadvantages, however great they be, are actually dwarfed before the monster terror of no money in our old age—or in times of sickness. True, there are old age pensions, there are charities for distressed gentlewomen, but no self-respecting professional worker can be beholden to these. We ought not to allow it.

Finally, as one who stands whole-heartedly for progress, may we not once more ask what is the use of a femininism that preaches hatred of the other sex, or a desire to exercise the wearing—for women, tearing—professions of men?

Man, with his better-balanced brain and uncomplicated physique, fills us with awe. See him at his magnificent work of building bridges, stemming rivers and piercing mountains, conquering Nature inch by inch! Woman can help his work and complete his life, but she may not enter into competition with him.

Let her not deceive herself: in spite of women in Parliament and other signs of advanced femininism, she has not gone very far. What she needs now is more humanity, more commonsense, and some of the Latin charm. If she works as man’s antagonist, she will be beaten back steadily.

Male and Female created He them.
And a little child shall lead them.

There, in a nutshell, is the truth.

. From A. M. PHILPOT’S LIST .

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Transcriber’s Notes

Pg 14 Changed: | the instrument of the Millenium
To: | the instrument of the Millennium
Pg 14 Changed: | the promised Millenium is still far to seek
To: | the promised Millennium is still far to seek
Pg 26 Changed: | women doctors, and in the medical mission-field
To: | women doctors, and in the medical mission field

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Table of Contents

- The Disadvantages of Being a Woman
- CONTENTS
- PUBLISHER’S NOTE
- INTRODUCTION
- I FEMINIST LEADERS AND THEIR MISTAKES
- II THE DRAWBACK OF HEALTH
- III BARRED FROM THE PROFESSIONS
- IV THE FRENCH BUSINESS WOMAN

- V THE LAWS FOR WOMEN—ILLOGICAL AND INCONSISTENT

- VI CAN WOMEN SUCCEED IN POLITICS?
- VII SEX IN WORK
- VIII IS FEMININITY AT A DISCOUNT?
- IX PIN-MONEY WOMEN
- X WHAT IS WRONG WITH MARRIAGE?
- XI THE FUTURE
- Transcriber’s Notes
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE