THE ECONOMIC POSITIONOFEDUCATED WORKING WOMEN.February, 1890.
February, 1890.
Mrs. Browning’s advice to women, much needed as it is at the present time, was somewhat harsh and unpractical at the time she gave it, more than thirty years ago. At that time it would not have been possible for a woman “to prove herself a leech and cure the plague”; for on the one hand she was debarred from obtaining the necessary qualifications, and on the other she was prohibited from practicing without them. The hospitals and lecture rooms were closed to her by prejudice, and practice was therefore forbidden her by Act of Parliament. Even had she obtained admittance to the dissecting room and hospital by quiet perseveranceand tried ability, she could not have hoped by such means alone to remove the obstacles which were placed in her path by legislation. The charters necessary to empower the Universities to confer degrees on women could never have been obtained, except through determined agitation; and if the agitators themselves did not seem competent to exercise the powers which they wished conferred on women, they performed the work for which theyweremost competent and made the path clear for those who could not have removed the obstacles themselves. The poet and the novelist had no such difficulties to contend with. Such women had no greater hardships to endure than men. If men disbelieved that a woman could write a powerful novel, she had only to do it to convince them of the contrary. But, generally speaking, women were prohibited from doing what they could, on the ground that they could not if they would. It was not universally so; in many cases girls who showed mathematical or logical power, for instance, were discouraged from exercising it, because reasoning power wasconsidered undesirable in women and likely to hinder their chances of marriage. But, on the whole, women’s incapacity for intellectual work was put forward as a reason for forbidding them to attempt it. The futility of forbidding women to do what they were incapable of doing was never perceived by the opponents of the movement for the higher education of women, who based their opposition on this ground. Nor did it avail much to point this out. Behind this asserted disbelief in the power of the educated woman to compete even with the average schoolboy, lay a real conviction, that if she could do so successfully, the more desirable it was to prevent her having the chance of proving it. It is on record that in the days of King Ahasuerus, more than 2,000 years ago, great terror was excited lest “the deed of Vashti should come abroad unto all women, so that they should despise their husbands in their eyes, when it should be reported that the King Ahasuerus commanded Vashti, the queen, to be brought in before him, but she came not. And in order that all wives should give to their husbands honour, bothto great and small, Ahasuerus sent letters into all the King’s provinces, that every man should bear rule in his own house.” As in the days of King Ahasuerus, so thirty years ago it was felt that humility in women should be cultivated at all costs, and if they became aware that all men were not necessarily their intellectual superiors they would break out into open revolt. Women had been told that they should obey their husbands because the latter knew best. If that were denied, the claim to obedience would have to rest on the possession of might instead of right.
This reiterated assertion of their inferiority has rankled in women’s hearts. For the last forty years it has been the source of most of the bitterness expressed openly on the platform, and the cause of invidious comparisons leading to mutual and undignified recriminations. It has affected the direction towards which the efforts of educational enthusiasts have been turned. Their one aim and object has been to show that capacities supposed to be essentially masculine are possessed by women also; to makeit possible for women to compete on equal terms with men and to prove that they are not always the last in the race.
That the question of equality or inferiority was a wholly irrelevant one was not their fault; they had to answer the arguments of those who held the keys, and they were not to blame if these arguments were foolish. We owe much to the women who, at the risk of great unpopularity and much social loss, fought the battles by which the doors were opened, through which others passed without one effort of their own. It is because their work has been successful, not from any depreciation of its value, that I maintain that it is time to review the outcome of the last ten or twelve years, during which women have been free to compete with men in the College and the University, and to take a new departure. London and Cambridge have admitted them to examinations on equal terms, although the latter still refuses them the hall-mark of the degree. Newnham and Girton have had to extend their premises; Lady Margaret and Somerville have been established and haveobtained some concessions from Oxford; University College, London, Mason’s College, Birmingham, the Welsh Colleges, and other men’s colleges, admit women to their class rooms on equal terms with men. London, Ireland, and Edinburgh admit them to their medical degrees; the Women’s School of Medicine is prosperous, and they have admission to a few hospitals. At London and Cambridge they have done themselves credit in every branch. So far as receptive power is concerned, it is now at least admitted that the rather-above-the-average woman is quite on a level with the average man. So far, so good. But although our self-respect may be considerably increased, what is our economic position? There are not yet 800 women graduates of London and Cambridge. Of these the majority are assistant mistresses in public or private schools, visiting teachers, lecturers, or head mistresses. There were in 1881, according to the census of that year, 123,000 women teachers, and over 4,000,000 girls between the ages of five years and twenty; and yet already this littlehandful of graduates is told that it is in excess of the demand and that it must take lower salaries in consequence. In our public high schools not one in four teachers is a graduate; in private schools the proportion is much smaller. I do not propose to discuss this question, and will only make two remarks on it. The first, that after an expensive college course, which is only less expensive than that of a man because a woman is less extravagant in her personal expenditure, a Girton or Newnham student who has taken a good degree may hope for an initial salary of £105 to £120 non-resident, rising by very slow degrees to about £140 to £150 a year. Secondly, that every graduate should remember that when she accepts a lower rate still, she is making it easier to lower the salaries of the great majority below her. If all women graduates, and they are not many, agreed to a minimum, less than which they would not accept, the mass of teachers, already underpaid, could not be told as they are at present, that graduates could easily be obtained for the sum they ask. The teacher with a higherlocal certificate could hold out for her £90 a year, little enough in all conscience, because she would know that no graduate would take less than £100.
But the head mistress engages so few graduates, not merely because of the higher salary demanded, but because she is quite content, or rather because the British parent is quite content, that his daughter should be taught by less competent persons. If we look for the cause of this indifference, we shall find that he does not attach the slightest value to the education which she is receiving. For some unknown reason girls seem to think it absolutely necessary to learn Latin; he does not wish his daughter to be at any disadvantage with other girls; therefore he lets her learn Latin. If other girls are taught well, his daughter must be taught well; but if other girls are taught badly, he is quite content that his daughter should be so also. He perhaps learned Latin himself for some similar reason at school, and so far as he knows he derived no benefit from it, and he is quite certain he derived no enjoyment from it. The mass of parents do not wishtheir daughters to be teachers; and they pertinently ask, what good are classics and the higher mathematics and advanced natural science to girls unless they intend to teach? A few can answer honestly, “We enjoy the study. It is delight to us. Plato, Sophocles, Æschylus speak to us with a more living voice than any of our modern thinkers. Mathematics is not merely a discipline to us but an absorbing occupation, taking us completely out of ourselves for the time being. A natural science is to us not a mere mass of ascertained facts unrelated to each other, but a system of interdependent laws giving a new meaning to life; its very incompleteness is a charm, for it gives us the opportunity of being ourselves discoverers.” A few can say this honestly; several, under the influence of a teacher whom they adore with that schoolgirl devotion so common in our high schools, persuade themselves that they feel some of the enjoyment that a properly-constituted mind would feel. What they really enjoy is the teacher’s enjoyment, which is infectious. There is no subject so dry or so useless that a living,healthy, human teacher cannot persuade girls to think it interesting for the time being. But the majority of girls—and boys too for that matter—are Philistines and care for none of these things. They do their work conscientiously enough, because it is their work. They derive benefit from it as from a kind of mental gymnastics, and so far as their school days are concerned no harm is done, and they have benefited by the mental discipline.
When a girl or boy is about seventeen, the future career is considered. In the case of a son, the father to some extent takes into account the boy’s natural bent, and also the chances of obtaining a post for him. Thenceforth his education takes a definite direction. If intended for one of the professions, the course is easily mapped out. In other cases the boy may be sent to the University, not so much for an academic as for a social training; very frequently he leaves school and at once begins his training for business or mercantile pursuits. If his father is a merchant, or large employer of labour, he will perhaps be sent elsewhere to learn all parts of his business and then take someresponsible post in his father’s firm. If this is impossible, relatives or friends or business connections may be able to offer him a post, and no stone is left unturned. There is no question either of his being content to have a low salary because he can live at home. Nor does he, if he has any sense, deliberately choose to enter an overstocked market, merely because the men who succeed in it are admitted to be men of high intelligence. If he has a high opinion of his own talents, or if he prefers shining by reflected light to earning an income, he does perhaps become a barrister or a doctor, without much fitness for the profession. But at least those who take up business prefer to enter a labour market where there are comparatively few men of ability yet to be found, and where the supply of them is not so great as the demand.
The girl of seventeen is never helped in the same way, in many cases because it has never occurred to men that girls could be so assisted. There are many other reasons, which I do not propose to dwell on here. I am not addressing myself to those whodo not wish women to earn their living, but to those who, having accepted the fact that many girls must work for a living, would be glad to help them in any way that might be suggested; and I am also speaking to those women who prefer, no matter what their private resources may be, to be trained for some occupation which will call for the exercise of mental powers which they know they possess. I am also confining my remarks to working women educated for their work in life, and am not referring to the large numbers of women who take up work without any other training than the general education acquired at school. If the woman, who from seventeen to twenty-two has been trained for her profession, cannot obtain the salary which, asMr.Pollard has shown, is necessary to keep her in good health and provide for her old age, there is no need to say that the untrained schoolgirl enters the labour market at a greater disadvantage. Now, on what principles is a girl’s career determined? In a large number of cases the parents take it for granted that she will be married in a fewyears, and they feel they can support her at home in comfort until then. Fortunately the girl herself does not always take this view; she thinks it quite possible that she never will be married, and she also sees that in that case she may in middle life be left with an income quite inadequate and necessitating a total change in her habits of living. If she has any public spirit, she will not undersell her poorer competitors, and will see no reason why she should not be paid the full worth of her services; she will be glad to know that her services are really worth her living. But all that she sees before her, unless she has exceptional talent, is teaching. It is the same with girls whohaveto earn their living and whose parents can only afford to give them an expensive training in the hope that a remunerative income may afterwards be obtained. They also must be teachers; it is the only brain-work offered them, and badly paid as it is, it is better paid than any other work done by women. The result is that we see girls following the stream and entering the teaching profession; after a few years, growing weary and sick of it, tired oftraining intellects, and doubtful about the practical value of the training, or altogether careless of it; discontented with a life for which they are naturally unsuited, and seeing no other career before them. We see others, who have a strong practical bent, giving themselves up to purely intellectual studies, because they are the only ones possible to them; and, on the other hand, clever girls, who have no scholastic ambitions, are left to fritter away their talents or exercise them with no aid but rule-of-thumb principles to guide them. The prizes, the exhibitions, the glory are all given to encourage scholarship. Brain-power is worshipped, and as people with brains are not encouraged to exercise them in a practical direction, the possession of brain-power is not ascribed to those who do not display capacity or liking for classics or mathematics or the abstract sciences. And the whole tendency is to compete with men where men are strongest. And here, socially, morally, and economically, we are making a great mistake. We are narrowing women to one kind of education, which would cut off the majority of themfrom sympathy with the men in their own class; they imbibe a false idea that culture means the possession of useless knowledge; and because men in the commercial world have a knowledge which enables them to perform services for which others are willing to pay, they are regarded as necessarily uncultured and mercenary. The leisured and professional classes take the precedence in the girl-graduate’s eyes as being better educated and having less sordid aims. But, fortunately for England, the majority of men are neither leisured nor professional, and the organisation of industry and the extension of commerce give scope for the exercise of the highest powers. Socially, therefore, the educated woman at present is isolated from her class and suffers in consequence. Morally she suffers, for she is not developing her natural powers. A woman’s emotional nature is different from a man’s, her inherited experience is different, her tastes are different, and—greatest heresy of all nowadays—her intellect is different. It is a common thing to say that there is no sex in intellect. If the upholders of this theory mean that fromtwo given premisses the same conclusion must be drawn by men and women whenever they think rightly, of course no one can deny it. But this purely deductive work can be done by machinery. The real work of intelligence is the induction which supplies the premisses, the selection of premisses suitable to the purpose in view and the application of the conclusion. The working of intelligence is prompted, strengthened, and directed by interest and emotion; and here it is that men and women differ, and always will differ, a woman inheriting as she does, with a woman’s nervous organization, a woman’s emotional nature. It is on this difference between men and women, amidst much which is common to both, that I build my hopes of women’s success in the future. I do not urge women to compete with men because they can do what men can, but because I believe they can do what men cannot; and I believe that those branches in which men have attained the highest pitch of excellence are those in which women are least likely to find pleasure or excel. Creditable as have been their performancesin the Mathematical Tripos, I am glad to see that their success in the Natural Science Tripos is much greater. Instead of glorying in having once in a score of years a Senior Classic, I take pride in the fact that in the four years since the Mediæval and Modern Language Tripos was instituted, women have always been in the front rank, and I notice with fear and trembling that, although during the first three years there was always a woman in the first class, and no men, last year, although there was no deterioration in the women’s work, they did not have the first class all to themselves. I look forward to the day, but I hope it will be long before it comes, when the men’s colleges shall rejoice because they have a man in the first class without a woman to share the honours. There are many things which men are doing alone, which could be done infinitely better if educated women helped them; and nowhere is this more obvious to me, although probably not to them, than in business. While there is much that can be done well by the human being, indifferently, whether man or woman, there is much that can only be done well bythe male human being, much that can only be done well by the female human being, and much that can only be done well by the two in conjunction. And if men in business only considered their daughters’ future in the same light as that of their sons, they would find many branches of business in which they could be most useful, and earn a good income. Girls inherit, to some extent, their intellectual capacities from their fathers, just as boys do from their mothers. And many a bright, clever, lazy girl would suddenly develop a most unexpected taste for study, if she had before her the prospect of doing practical, and to her most interesting work, as one of her father’s managers, or as foreign correspondence clerk, or as chemist or artistic designer in a large manufactory; or as assistant steward on her father’s property, or as a farmer on her own freehold, if (rents having gone down) he is unable to leave her an income. For all these a course of hard mental training is necessary or at least desirable; and the girl would be receiving culture on the one hand, and would have a chance of developing her natural gifts on the other.Many a girl, accustomed to a country life, would much prefer the occupations and life of a farmer to that of a teacher, provided she is allowed to have the college life and the free intercourse with other girls which is the main attraction of Girton and Newnham. The work would be far more interesting to her if she came to it with the enthusiasm of a scientist with theories to be tested. What is drudgery to an uneducated person may often be pleasurable to an educated one.
No one can study the organisation of industry at the present time without noticing that there is great room for improvement. Good organisers are extremely rare; and even in the internal management of a factory, perhaps the least important part of the work of a great manufacturer, much could be done which is rarely done at present. The admittance of educated women to a share in factory management should really be regarded in the light of co-operation with men, not competition with them. A man and a woman looking at a work-room are struck by different features, and each can besuggestive to the other. This is especially the case wherever women are employed.
The question of capacity is a more difficult one for me to answer, but an easier one for the individual girl, if she is not afraid of ridicule. And it is at this point that I would reiterate Mrs. Browning’s advice. To any really clever girl who asked me for advice as to her future work I should say, “What do you think you could do best if it were possible for you to do it? Whatever that is, do your very best to get training in it, to show by capacity at one stage that you could master the next if you had the chance. If you do this, you will find that the men who laughed at women for thinking of doing such work will frequently be the very ones to make an exception in your favour and to help you over the next difficulty. If you wish to be a farmer, and to study every department of your work and be thoroughly grounded in agricultural science, make the best of your opportunities where you are, attend classes if possible in the technological department of a good college; and if the agricultural colleges are closed towomen, when you have done everything you can without them, get one of them to make an exception in your favour. Whatever it may be that you wish to do, prepare yourself for it, and, instead of bemoaning the ill-treatment of women in general, persuade those in authority of your fitness in particular. And when you have gained your end help every girl you can who shows similar capacities.”
One effect on the economic position of educated working women of such an extension of employment would be to enable them to measure their value. Teachers are paid out of fixed income, and their salaries are almost entirely determined by standard of living. If employed in business they would be employed for profit, and if they increased profits their value would rise, and could be measured; they would be paid according to their worth and not according to their standard of living. Education would be better adapted to practical needs, and teachers would be held in higher honour accordingly. Large numbers of clever girls would be spurred to exertion, whose intellectualpowers have hitherto lain in abeyance, because no education was offered them corresponding to their needs. There are other arts, which women already practise, which it would be well for them to study on a scientific basis. Not only the future wife, mother, and housekeeper needs a knowledge of physiology, the laws of health, and domestic economy, but to a still greater extent the future Poor Law guardian, Board School manager, factory and workshop inspector, and sanitary officer; and both household manager and public officer should study the relation between domestic and national economics. Nor can any man do a greater injury to women in this respect than by placing a woman in a responsible post for which she has not been proved competent. The incapacity of a man is referred to the man himself; that of a woman is credited to the sex. But although a man may foolishly vote for a woman to be placed on the School Board or Board of Guardians merely because she is a woman, without knowing anything about her, I am not afraid that he will ever give her a well-paid post in his own businessunless she is fit for it. Women who give their services for nothing are rarely told the truth; it will be a good thing for them when they receive, instead of flattery and thanks, criticism and payment.
I can only touch on one point more. I may be told that the effect of encouraging all girls, who display strength of character or intellectual power above the average, to make themselves pecuniarily independent, and to devote their energies to some special and definite occupation which will call forth their powers, will be to make them too absorbed or unwilling to enter upon marriage, and that the next generation must suffer from the strongest and most intellectual women holding aloof from wifehood and motherhood. Others, on the other hand, may say that their work will suffer, because the expectation of marriage will hinder them from doing their best. The latter objection will not, I think, be supported by those who are acquainted with the work of women graduates. There is much truth in the former one. Women who have been trained for a special work, and who liketheir work, either do not marry at all or marry comparatively late in life, and it may at first sight seem injurious to the race that this should be so. But I think this is a mistake. The men and women of the most marked individuality do not make the best husbands and wives, especially if they marry before they have become aware of their own character. Although a theory prevails to the contrary, I believe that women come to intellectual maturity later than men. They have a magnificent power of self-deception, of persuading themselves that they think and believe the things which those they care for think and believe—they are so little encouraged to think for themselves that many a woman, married when but a girl, has later on discovered that she has a character of her own, hitherto unrevealed to herself and unsuspected by her husband. Marriage, as George Eliot has said, must be a relation of sympathy or of conquest. But such women, if sympathy has not really existed between them and their husbands, are never conquered; they may be slaves or rebels, but never loyal subjects; and history is full ofrecords of the disastrous early marriages of clever women. On the other hand, Hannah More, Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, Joanna Baillie, Caroline Herschell, Harriet Martineau, all women of brilliant intellect, have left their mark on history as good and happy women; and we can all of us give a long list of such bright and contented lives from the unmarried women of our own acquaintance who have found their vocation. If they have missed the best in life, they have always been true to themselves. The economic independence of women is as necessary to men’s happiness as to women’s. Their true interests can never be opposed or antagonistic, however much those of an individual man and woman may be. There is no hardship to women in working for a living; the hardship lies in not getting a living when they work for it. And the great temptation from which all women should most earnestly strive to be freed is that which presents itself to so many at one time or another—the temptation to accept marriage as a means of livelihood and an escape from poverty. And if men would escape thedegradation of being accepted by a woman in such a spirit, they should be anxious to do all in their power to make women free, to remove all obstructions raised by prejudice; and when a woman can do anything worth doing, “to give her of the fruit of her hands and to let her own works praise her in the gates.”