The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/192 (page 15)
    expression between men and women are no greater than they should be in view of the existing differences in opportunity.” g. We have outlined the biological view that there is a deep constitutional or organic distinction between man and woman, and that this finds expression in a large number of detailed differ- ences, which are natural in origin and natural also in having survived ages of elimination. Coming, now, to practical theses, we may notice first of all that some of the educational, occupational, and social differentiations of man and woman in past times have been quite harmonious and consistent with the fundamental divergence. It seems con- sistent that men should fight, if there is fighting to be done; and that women should nurse, if there is nursing necessary. Man hunted and explored, woman made the home and brought up the children. Man sailed the seas, while woman developed home industries. Woman is naturally a teacher of the young, a domesticator, a gardener, and so on. Scores of these harmonious differentia- tions still exist. This is an historical commonplace, which need not be elaborated; it suggests, however, several remarks that may be of service. (2) When we say that this or that occupational differentiation is natural to woman, we do not simply mean that it has been sanctioned by convention. We mean that it is congruent with femaleness, that it occurs in many races and countries, and