ULTERIOR ENDS WHICH THE WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT HAS IN VIEW
We have now sufficiently considered the suffragist’s
humanitarian schemes, and we may lead up to the consideration
of her further projects by contrasting woman’s
suffrage as it presents itself under colonial conditions—i.e.
woman’s suffrage without the female legislative
reformer and the feminist—with the woman
suffrage which is being agitated for in England—i.e.
woman suffrage with the female legislative reformer
and the feminist.
In the colonies and undeveloped countries generally
where women are in a minority, and where owing to
the fact that practically all have an opportunity
of marrying, there are not for woman any difficult
economic and physiological conditions, there is no
woman’s question; and by consequence no female
legislative reformer or feminist. The woman voter
follows, as the opportunist politicians who enfranchised
her intended, the lead of her men-folk—serving
only a pawn in the game of politics. Under such
conditions woman’s suffrage kleaves things as
they are, except only that it undermines the logical
foundations of the law, and still further debases the
standard of public efficiency and public morality.
In countries, such as England, where an excess female
population [1] has made economic difficulties for
woman, and where the severe sexual restrictions, which
here obtains, have bred in her sex-hostility, the
suffrage movement has as its avowed ulterior object
the abrogation of all distinctions which depend upon
sex; and the achievement of the economic independence
of woman.
[1] In England and Wales there are, in a population
of 8,000,000 women between the ages of twenty and
fifty, 3,000,000 unmarried women.
To secure this economic independence every post, occupation,
and Government service is to be thrown open to woman;
she is to receive everywhere the same wages as man;
male and female are to work side by side; and they
are indiscriminately to be put in command the one over
the other. Furthermore, legal rights are to be
secured to the wife over her husband’s property
and earnings. The programme is, in fact, to give
to woman an economic independence out of the earnings
and taxes of man.
Nor does feminist ambition stop short here. It
demands that women shall be included in every advisory
committee, every governing board, every jury, every
judicial bench, every electorate, every parliament,
and every ministerial cabinet; further, that every
masculine foundation, university, school of learning,
academy, trade union, professional corporation and
scientific society shall be converted into an epicene
institution—until we shall have everywhere
one vast cock-and-hen show.
The proposal to bring man and woman together everywhere
into extremely intimate relationships raises very
grave questions. It brings up, first, the question
of sexual complications; secondly, the question as
to whether the tradition of modesty and reticence between
the sexes is to be definitely sacrificed; and, most
important of all, the question as to whether epicene
conditions would place obstacles in the way of intellectual
work.
