The Subjection of Women
share, of the bodily and mental exertion required by their joint
existence. If she undertakes any additional portion, it seldom
relieves her from this, but only prevents her from performing it
properly. The care which she is herself disabled from taking of the
children and the household, nobody else takes; those of the children
who do not die, grow up as they best can, and the management of the
household is likely to be so bad, as even in point of economy to be a
great drawback from the value of the wife's earnings. In an otherwise
just state of things, it is not, therefore, I think, a desirable
custom, that the wife should contribute by her labour to the income
of the family. In an unjust state of things, her doing so may be
useful to her, by making her of more value in the eyes of the man who
is legally her master; but, on the other hand, it enables him still
farther to abuse his power, by forcing her to work, and leaving the
support of the family to her exertions, while he spends most of his
time in drinking and idleness. The _power_ of earning is essential to
the dignity of a woman, if she has not independent property. But if
marriage were an equal contract, not implying the obligation of
obedience; if the connexion were no longer enforced to the oppression
of those to whom it is purely a mischief, but a separation, on just
terms (I do not now speak of a divorce), could be obtained by any
woman who was morally entitled to it; and if she would then find all
honourable employments as freely open to her as to men; it would not
be necessary for her protection, that during marriage she should make
this particular use of her faculties. Like a man when he chooses a
profession, so, when a woman marries, it may in general be understood
that she makes choice of the management of a household, and the
bringing up of a family, as the first call upon her exertions, during
as many years of her life as may be required for the purpose; and
that she renounces, not all other objects and occupations, but all
which are not consistent with the requirements of this. The actual
exercise, in a habitual or systematic manner, of outdoor occupations,
or such as cannot be carried on at home, would by this principle be
practically interdicted to the greater number of married women. But
the utmost latitude ought to exist for the adaptation of general
rules to individual suitabilities; and there ought to be nothing to
prevent faculties exceptionally adapted to any other pursuit, from
obeying their vocation notwithstanding marriage: due provision being
made for supplying otherwise any falling-short which might become
inevitable, in her full performance of the ordinary functions of
mistress of a family. These things, if once opinion were rightly
directed on the subject, might with perfect safety be left to be
regulated by opinion, without any interference of law.
CHAPTER III.
On the other point which is involved in the just equality of women,
their admissibility to all the functions and occupations hitherto
retained as the monopoly of the stronger sex, I should anticipate no
difficulty in convincing any one who has gone with me on the subject
of the equality of women in the family. I believe that their
disabilities elsewhere are only clung to in order to maintain their
subordination in domestic life; because the generality of the male
sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal. Were it not
for that, I think that almost every one, in the existing state of
opinion in politics and political economy, would admit the injustice
of excluding half the human race from the greater number of lucrative
occupations, and from almost all high social functions; ordaining
from their birth either that they are not, and cannot by any
possibility become, fit for employments which are legally open to the
stupidest and basest of the other sex, or else that however fit they
may be, those employments shall be interdicted to them, in order to
be preserved for the exclusive benefit of males. In the last two
centuries, when (which was seldom the case) any reason beyond the
mere existence of the fact was thought to be required to justify the
disabilities of women, people seldom assigned as a reason their
inferior mental capacity; which, in times when there was a real trial
of personal faculties (from which all women were not excluded) in the
struggles of public life, no one really believed in. The reason given
in those days was not women's unfitness, but the interest of society,
by which was meant the interest of men: just as the _raison d'etat_,
meaning the convenience of the government, and the support of
existing authority, was deemed a sufficient explanation and excuse
for the most flagitious crimes. In the present day, power holds a
smoother language, and whomsoever it oppresses, always pretends to do
so for their own good: accordingly, when anything is forbidden to
women, it is thought necessary to say, and desirable to believe, that
they are incapable of doing it, and that they depart from their real
path of success and happiness when they aspire to it. But to make
this reason plausible (I do not say valid), those by whom it is urged
must be prepared to carry it to a much greater length than any one
ventures to do in the face of present experience. It is not
sufficient to maintain that women on the average are less gifted than
men on the average, with certain of the higher mental faculties, or
that a smaller number of women than of men are fit for occupations
and functions of the highest intellectual character. It is necessary
to maintain that no women at all are fit for them, and that the most
eminent women are inferior in mental faculties to the most mediocre
of the men on whom those functions at present devolve. For if the
performance of the function is decided either by competition, or by
any mode of choice which secures regard to the public interest, there
needs be no apprehension that any important employments will fall
into the hands of women inferior to average men, or to the average of
their male competitors. The only result would be that there would be
fewer women than men in such employments; a result certain to happen
in any ease, if only from the preference always likely to be felt by
the majority of women for the one vocation in which there is nobody
to compete with them. Now, the most determined depreciator of women
will not venture to deny, that when we add the experience of recent
times to that of ages past, women, and not a few merely, but many
women, have proved themselves capable of everything, perhaps without
a single exception, which is done by men, and of doing it
successfully and creditably. The utmost that can be said is, that
there are many things which none of them have succeeded in doing as
well as they have been done by some men--many in which they have not
reached the very highest rank. But there are extremely few, dependent
only on mental faculties, in which they have not attained the rank
next to the highest. Is not this enough, and much more than enough,
to make it a tyranny to them, and a detriment to society, that they
should not be allowed to compete with men for the exercise of these
functions? Is it not a mere truism to say, that such functions are
often filled by men far less fit for them than numbers of women, and
who would be beaten by women in any fair field of competition? What
difference does it make that there may be men somewhere, fully
employed about other things, who may be still better qualified for
the things in question than these women? Does not this take place in
all competitions? Is there so great a superfluity of men fit for high
duties, that society can afford to reject the service of any
competent person? Are we so certain of always finding a man made to
our hands for any duty or function of social importance which falls
vacant, that we lose nothing by putting a ban upon one-half of
mankind, and refusing beforehand to make their faculties available,
however distinguished they may be? And even if we could do without
them, would it be consistent with justice to refuse to them their
fair share of honour and distinction, or to deny to them the equal
moral right of all human beings to choose their occupation (short of
injury to others) according to their own preferences, at their own
risk? Nor is the injustice confined to them: it is shared by those
who are in a position to benefit by their services. To ordain that
any kind of persons shall not be physicians, or shall not be
advocates, or shall not be members of parliament, is to injure not
them only, but all who employ physicians or advocates, or elect
members of parliament, and who are deprived of the stimulating effect
of greater competition on the exertions of the competitors, as well
as restricted to a narrower range of individual choice.
It will perhaps be sufficient if I confine myself, in the details of
my argument, to functions of a public nature: since, if I am
successful as to those, it probably will be readily granted that
women should be admissible to all other occupations to which it is at
all material whether they are admitted or not. And here let me begin
by marking out one function, broadly distinguished from all others,
their right to which is entirely independent of any question which
can be raised concerning their faculties. I mean the suffrage, both
parliamentary and municipal. The right to share in the choice of
those who are to exercise a public trust, is altogether a distinct
thing from that of competing for the trust itself. If no one could
vote for a member of parliament who was not fit to be a candidate,
the government would be a narrow oligarchy indeed. To have a voice in
choosing those by whom one is to be governed, is a means of
self-protection due to every one, though he were to remain for ever
excluded from the function of governing: and that women are
considered fit to have such a choice, may be presumed from the fact,
that the law already gives it to women in the most important of all
cases to themselves: for the choice of the man who is to govern a
woman to the end of life, is always supposed to be voluntarily made
by herself. In the case of election to public trusts, it is the
business of constitutional law to surround the right of suffrage with
all needful securities and limitations; but whatever securities are
sufficient in the case of the male sex, no others need be required in
the case of women. Under whatever conditions, and within whatever
limits, men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of
justification for not admitting women under the same. The majority of
the women of any class are not likely to differ in political opinion
from the majority of the men of the same class, unless the question
be one in which the interests of women, as such, are in some way
involved; and if they are so, women require the suffrage, as their
guarantee of just and equal consideration. This ought to be obvious
even to those who coincide in no other of the doctrines for which I
contend. Even if every woman were a wife, and if every wife ought to
be a slave, all the more would these slaves stand in need of legal
protection: and we know what legal protection the slaves have, where
the laws are made by their masters.
With regard to the fitness of women, not only to participate in
elections, but themselves to hold offices or practise professions
involving important public responsibilities; I have already observed
that this consideration is not essential to the practical question in
dispute: since any woman, who succeeds in an open profession, proves
by that very fact that she is qualified for it. And in the case of
public offices, if the political system of the country is such as to