The men and women teachers are organized jointly. Women are employed by the state in the postal and telegraph service. The wages of these women, like those of the women laborers, are lower than those of the men. There is a factory law that protects women laborers and children working in the factories. The trade-unions are socialistic and have men and women members. The laws regulating the legal status of woman have been influenced by German laws. The wife controls her earnings. Politically the Bulgarian woman has no rights.
The Federation of Bulgarian Women’s Clubs was organized in 1899; in 1908 it joined the International Council of Women. Woman’s suffrage occupies thefirst place on the programme of the Federation; in 1908 it joined the International Woman’s Suffrage Affiance.
The Bulgarian women, too, have recognized woman’s suffrage as the key to all other woman’s rights. To the present time their demands have been supported by radicals and democrats (who are not very influential).
A meeting of the Federation in 1908 demanded:
1. Active and passive suffrage for women in school administration and municipal councils.2. The reopening of the University to women. (This has been granted.)3. The increase of the salaries of women teachers. (They are paid 10 per cent less than the men teachers.)4. The same curriculums for the boys’ and girls’ schools.5. An enlargement of woman’s field of labor.6. Better protection to women and children working in factories.
1. Active and passive suffrage for women in school administration and municipal councils.
2. The reopening of the University to women. (This has been granted.)
3. The increase of the salaries of women teachers. (They are paid 10 per cent less than the men teachers.)
4. The same curriculums for the boys’ and girls’ schools.
5. An enlargement of woman’s field of labor.
6. Better protection to women and children working in factories.
The President of the Federation is the wife of the President of the Ministry, Malinoff. Because the Federation, led by Mrs. Malinoff, did not oppose the reactionary measures of the Ministry (of Stambolavitch), Mrs. Anna Carima, who had been President of the Federation to 1906, organized the “League of Progressive Women.” This League demands equal rights for the sexes. It admits only confirmed woman’s rightsadvocates (men and women). It will request the political emancipation of women in a petition which it intends to present to the National Parliament, which must be called after Bulgaria has been converted into a kingdom. In July (1909) the Progressive League will hold a meeting to draft its constitution.
RUMANIA
The status of the Rumanian women is similar to that of the Servian and Bulgarian women; but the legal profession has been opened to the Bulgarian women. A discussion of Rumania must be omitted, since my efforts to secure reliable information have been unsuccessful.
GREECE[108]
The Greek woman’s rights movement concerns itself for the time being with philanthropy and education.Its guiding spirit is Madame Kallirhoe Parren (who acted as delegate in Chicago in 1893, and in Paris in 1900). Madame Parren succeeded in 1896 in organizing a Federation of Greek Women, which has belonged to the International Council of Women since 1908. The presidency of the Federation was accepted by Queen Olga.
The Federation has five sections:
1. The national section. This acts as a patriotic woman’s club. In 1897 it rendered invaluable assistance in the Turco-Greek War, erecting four hospitals on the border and one in Athens. The nurses belonged to the best families; the work was superintended byDr. med.Marie Kalapothaki andDr. med.Bassiliades.
2. The educational section. This section establishes kindergartens; it has opened a seminary for kindergartners, and courses for women teachers of gymnastics.[109]
3. The section for the establishment of domestic economy schools and continuation schools. This section is attempting to enlarge the non-domestic field of women and at the same time to prepare women better for their domestic calling. The efforts of this section are quite in harmony with the spirit of the times. The Greek woman’s struggle for existence is exceedinglydifficult; she must face a backwardness of public opinion such as was overcome in northern Europe long ago. This section has also founded a home for workingwomen.
4. The hygiene section. Under the leadership of Dr. Kalapothaki this section has organized an orthopedic and gynecological clinic. The section also gives courses on the care of children, and provides for the care of women in confinement.
5. The philanthropic section. This provides respectable but needy girls with trousseaus (Austeuern).
Mrs. Parren has for eighteen years been editor of a woman’s magazine in Athens. (Miss)Dr. med.Panajotatu has since 1908 been a lecturer in bacteriology at Athens University. At her inaugural lecture the students made a hostile demonstration. Miss Bassiliades acts as physician in the women’s penitentiary. Miss Lascaridis and Miss Ionidis are respected artists; Mrs. v. Kapnist represents woman in literature, especially in poetry. Mrs. Parren has written several dramatic works (some advocating woman’s rights), which have been presented in Athens, Smyrna, Constantinople, and Alexandria. Mrs. Parren is a director of the society of dramatists.
Government positions are still closed to women. As late as 1909, after great difficulties, the first women telephone clerks were appointed.
In the Orient and the Far East woman is almost without exception a plaything or a beast of burden; and to a degree that would incense us Europeans. In the uncivilized countries, and in the countries of non-European civilization, the majority of the women are insufficiently nourished; in all cases more poorly than the men. Early marriages enervate the women. They are old at thirty; this is especially true of the lower classes. Among us, to be sure, such cases occur also; unfortunately without sufficient censure being given when necessary. But we have abolished polygamy and the harem. Both still exist almost undisturbed in the Orient and the Far East.
TURKEY AND EGYPT
Total population: 34,000,000.
A federation of women’s clubs has just been founded in each country.
In all the Mohammedan countries the wealthy woman lives in the harem with her slaves. The woman of the lower classes, however, is guarded or restricted no morethan with us. Apparently the Turkish and the Arabian women of the lower classes have an unrestrained existence. But because they are subject to the absolute authority of their husbands, their life is in most cases that of a beast of burden. They work hard and incessantly. For the Mohammedan of the lower classes polygamy is economically a useful institution: four women are four laborers that earn more than they consume.
Domestic service offers workingwomen in the Orient the broadest field of labor. The women slaves in the harems[110]are usually well treated, and they have sufficient to live on. They associate with women shopkeepers, women dancers, midwives, hairdressers, manicurists, pedicures, etc. These are in the pay of the wives of the wealthy. Thanks to this army of spies, a Turkish woman is informed, without leaving her harem, of every step of her husband.
The oppression that all women must endure, and the general fear of the infidelity of husbands, have created among oriental women anesprit de corpsthat is unknown to European women. Among the upper classes polygamy is being abolished because the country is impoverished and the large estates have been squandered; moreover, each wife is now demanding her own household, whereas formerly the wives all lived together.
Through the influence of the European women educators, an emancipation movement has been started among the younger generation of women in Constantinople. Many fathers, often through vanity, have given their daughters a European education. Elementary schools, secondary schools, and technical schools have existed in Turkey and Egypt since 1839. The women graduates of these schools are now opposing oriental marriage and life in the harem. At present this is causing tragic conflicts.[111]
To the present, two Turkish women have spoken publicly at international congresses of women. Selma Riza, sister of the “Young Turkish” General, Ahmed Riza, spoke in Paris in 1900, and Mrs. Haïrie Ben-Aid spoke in Berlin in 1904.
The Mohammedan women have a legal supporter of their demands in Kassim Amin Bey, counselor of the Court of Appeals in Cairo. In his pamphlet on the woman’s rights question he proposes the following programme:—
Legal prohibition of polygamy.Woman’s right to file a divorce suit. (Hitherto a woman is divorced if her husband, even without cause, says thee times consecutively “You are divorced.”)Woman’s freedom to choose her husband.The training of women in independent thought and action.A thorough education for woman.
Legal prohibition of polygamy.
Woman’s right to file a divorce suit. (Hitherto a woman is divorced if her husband, even without cause, says thee times consecutively “You are divorced.”)
Woman’s freedom to choose her husband.
The training of women in independent thought and action.
A thorough education for woman.
In 1910 a congress of Mohammedan women will be held in Cairo.
I may add that the Koran, the Mohammedan code of laws, gives a married woman the full status of a legal person before the law, and full civil ability. It recognizes separation of property as legal, and grants the wife the right to control and to dispose of her property. Hence the Koran is more liberal than the Code Napoleon or the German Civil Code. Whether the restrictions of the harem make the exercise of these rights impossible in practice, I am unable to say.
European schools, as well as the newly foundedUniversités populaires, are in Turkey and in Egypt the centers of enlightenment among the Mohammedans. The European women doctors in Constantinople, Alexandria, and Cairo are all disseminators of modern culture. A woman lawyer practices in the Cairo court, and has been admitted to the lawyers’ society.
The Young Turk movement and the reform of Turkey on a constitutional basis found hearty support among the women. They expressed themselves orally and in writing in favor of the liberal ideas; they spoke in public and held public meetings; they attempted toappear in public without veils, and to attend the theater in order to see a patriotic play; they sent a delegation to the Young Turk committee requesting the right to occupy the spectators’ gallery in Parliament; and, finally, they organized the Women’s Progress Society, which comprises women of all nationalities but concerns itself only with philanthropy and education. As a consequence, the government is said to have resolved to erect a humanisticGymnasiumfor girls in Constantinople. The leader of the Young Turks, the present President of the Chamber of Deputies, is, as a result of his long stay in Paris, naturally convinced of the superiority of harem life and legal polygamy (when compared with occidental practices).[112]The freedom of action of the Mohammedan women, especially in the provinces, might be much hampered by traditional obstacles. Nevertheless, the restrictions placed on the Mohammedan woman have been abolished, as is proved by the following:—
In Constantinople there has been founded a “Young Turkish Woman’s League” that proposes to bring about the same great revolutionary changes in the intellectual life of woman that have already been introduced into the political life of man. Knowledge and its benefits must in the future be made accessible to the Turkish women. This is to be done openly. Formerly allstrivings of the Turkish women were carried on in secret. The women revolutionists were anxiously guarded; as far as possible, information concerning their movements was secured before they left their homes. The Turkish women wish to prove that they, as well as the women of other countries, have human rights. When the constitution of the “Young Turkish Woman’s League” was being drawn up, Enver Bey was present. He was thoroughly in favor of the demands of the new woman’s rights movement. The “Young Turkish Woman’s League” is under the protection of Princess Refià Sultana, daughter of the Sultan. Princess Refià, a young woman of twenty-one years of age, has striven since her eighteenth year to acquire a knowledge of the sciences. She speaks several languages. The enthusiasm of the Young Turkish women is great. Many of them appear on the streets without veils,—a thing that no prominent Turkish woman could do formerly. Women of all classes have joined the League. The committee daily receives requests foradmissionto membership.
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Bosnia and Herzegovina, being Mohammedan countries, have harems and the restricted views of haremlife. Naturally, a woman’s rights movement is not to be thought of. Polygamy and patriarchal life are characteristic.
Into this Mohammedan country the Austrian government has sent women disseminators of the culture of western Europe,[113]—the Bosnian district women doctors. The first of these was Dr. Feodora Krajevska in Dolna Tuszla, now in Serajewo. Now she has several women colleagues. The women doctors wear uniforms,—a black coat, a black overcoat with crimson facings and with two stars on the collar.
PERSIA
Total population: about 9,500,000.
In Persia hardly a beginning of the woman’s rights movement exists. The Report[114]that I have before me closes thus: “The Persian woman lives, as it were, a negative life, but does not seem to strive for a change in her condition.” Certainly not. Like the Turkish and the Arabian woman, she is bound by the Koran. Her educational opportunities are even less (there are very few European schools, governesses, and women doctors in Persia). Her field of activity is restricted to agriculture, domestic service, tailoring, andoccasionally, teaching. However, she is said to be quite skillful in the management of her financial affairs. As far as I know, the Persian woman took no part in the constitutional struggle of 1908-1909.
INDIA
Total population: 300,000,000.
The Indian woman’s rights movement originated through the efforts of the English. The movement is as necessary and as difficult as the movement in China. The Indian religions teach that woman should be despised. “A cow is worth more than a thousand women.” The birth of a girl is a misfortune: “May the tree grow in the forest, but may no daughter be born to me.”[115]
Formerly it was permissible to drown newborn girls; the English government had to abolish this barbarity (as it abolished the suttee). The Indian woman lives in her apartment, the zenana; here the mother-in-law wields the scepter over the daughters-in-law, the grandchildren, and the women servants. The small girl learns to cook and to embroider; anything beyond that is iniquitous: woman has no brain. The girls that are educated in England must upon their returnagain don the veil and adjust themselves to native conditions. At the age of five or six the little girls are engaged, sometimes to young men of ten or twelve years, sometimes to men of forty or fifty. The marriage takes place several years later. Sometimes a man has more than one wife. The wife waits on her husband while he is eating; she eats what remains.
If the wife bears a son, she is reinstated. If she is widowed, she must fast and constantly offer apologies for existing. The widows and orphans were the first natives to become interested in the higher education of women. This was due to economic and social conditions.
India was the cradle of mankind. Even the highest civilizations still bear indelible marks of the dreadful barbarities that have just been mentioned. The Indian woman has rebelled against her miserable condition. The English women considered it possible to bring health, hope, and legal aid to the women of the zenana, through women doctors, women missionaries, and women lawyers. Hence in 1866 zenana missions were organized by English women doctors and missionaries. Native women were soon studying medicine in order to bring an end to the superstitions of the zenana. Dr. Clara Swain came to India in 1869 as the first woman medical missionary. As early as 1872-1873 the first hospital for women was founded; in 1885, throughthe work of Lady Dufferin, there originated the Indian National League for Giving Medical Aid to Women (Nationalverband für ärztliche Frauenhilfe in Indien).
Native women have studied law in order to represent their sex in the courts. Their chief motive was to secure an opportunity of conferring with the women in the zenana, a privilege not granted the male lawyer. The first Indian woman lawyer, Cornelia Sorabija, was admitted to the bar in Poona. Even in England the women have not yet been granted this privilege. This is easily explained. The Indian women cannot be clients of men lawyers; what men lawyers cannot take, they generously leave to the women lawyers.
India has 300,000,000 people; hence these meager beginnings of a woman’s rights movement are infinitesimal when compared with the vast work that remains undone.[116]The educated Indian woman is participating in the nationalist movement that is now being directed against English rule. Brahmanism hinders the Indian woman in making use of the educational opportunities offered by the English government. Brahmanism and its priests nourish in woman a feeling of humility and the fear that she will lose her caste through contact with Europeans and infidels. TheParsee women and the Mohammedan women do not have this fear. The Parsee women (Pundita Ramabai, for example) have played a leading part in the emancipation of their sex in India. But the Mohammedan women of India are reached by the movement only with difficulty. By the Hindoo of the old régime, woman is kept in great ignorance and superstition; her education is limited to a small stock of aphorisms and rules of etiquette; her life in the zenana is largely one of idleness. “Ennui almost causes them to lose their minds” is a statement based on the reports of missionaries.
There are modern schools for girls in all large cities (Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, etc.). The status of the native woman has been Europeanized to the greatest extent in Bengal. The best educated of the native women of all classes are the dancing girls (bayadères); unfortunately they are not “virtuous women” (honnêtes femmes), hence education among women has been in ill repute.
A congress of women was held in Calcutta in 1906 with a woman as chairman; this congress discussed the condition of Indian women. At the medical congress of 1909, in Bombay, Hindoo women doctors spoke effectively. The women doctors have formed the Association of Medical Women in India. In Madras there is published theIndian Ladies’ Magazine.[117]
CHINA[118]
Total population: 426,000,000.
The Chinese woman of the lower classes has the same status as the Mohammedan woman,—ostensible freedom of movement, and hard work. The women of the property owning classes, however, must remain in the house; here, entertaining one another, they live and eat, apart from the men. As woman is not considered in the Chinese worship of ancestors, her birth is as unwished for as that of the Indian woman. Among the poor the birth of a daughter is an economic misfortune. Who will provide for her? Hence in the three most densely populated provinces the murder of girl babies is quite common. In many cases mothers kill their little girls to deliver them from the misery of later life. The father, husband, and the mother-in-law are the masters of the Chinese woman. She can possess property only when she is a widow (see the much more liberal provisions of the Koran).
The earnings of the Chinese wife belong to her husband. But in case of a dispute in this matter, no court would decide in the husband’s favor, for he is supposed to be “the bread winner” of the family. Polygamy is customary; but the Chinese may have onlyonelegitimatewife (while the Mohammedan may have four). The concubine has the status of ahetaera; she travels with the man, keeps his accounts, etc. The Chinese woman of the property owning class lives, in contrast to the Hindoo woman, a life filled with domestic duties. She makes all the clothes for the family; even the most wealthy women embroider. Frequently the wife succeeds in becoming the adviser of the husband. A widow is not despised; she can remarry. The women of the lower classes engage in agriculture, domestic service, the retail business, all kinds of agencies and commission businesses, factory work (to a small extent), medical science (practiced in a purely experimental way), and midwifery; they carry burdens and assist in the loading and unloading of ships. Women’s wages are one half or three fourths of those of the men.
The lives of the Chinese women, especially among the lower classes, are so wretched that mothers believe they are doing a good deed when they strangle their little girls, or place them on the doorstep where they will be gathered up by the wagon that collects the corpses of children. Many married women commit suicide. “The suffering of the women in this dark land is indescribable,” says an American woman missionary. Those Chinese women that believe in the transmigration of souls hope “in the next world to be anything but a woman.”
Foreign women doctors, like the women missionaries, are bringing a little cheer into these sad places. Most of these women are English or American. The beginning of a real woman’s rights movement is the work of the Anti-Foot-Binding societies, which are opposing the binding of women’s feet. This reform is securing supporters among men and women.
For seventeen years there has existed a school for Chinese women. This was founded by Kang You Wei, the first Chinese to demand that both sexes should have the same rights. The women that have devoted themselves during these seventeen years to the emancipation of their sex must often face martyrdom. Tsin King, the founder of a semimonthly magazine for women, and of a modern school for girls, met death on the scaffold in 1907 during a political persecution directed against all progressive elements.
Another woman’s rights advocate, Miss Sin Peng Sie, donated 200,000 taëls (a taël is equivalent to 72.9 cents) for the erection of aGymnasiumfor girls in her native city, 100,000 taëls to endow a pedagogical magazine, and 50,000 taëls for the support of minor schools for girls. Still another woman’s rights advocate, Wu Fang Lan, resisted every attempt to bind her feet in the traditional manner. There exists a woman’s league, through whose efforts the government, in 1908, prohibited the binding of the feet of little girls.
In recent years thewomen’s magazineshave increased in number. Four large publications, devoted solely to women’s interests, are published in Canton; five are published in Shanghai, and about as many in every other large city. The new system of education (adopted in 1905) grants women freedom. Girls’ schools have been opened everywhere; in the large cities there are girls’ secondary schools in which the Chinese classics, foreign languages, and other cultural subjects are taught. In Tien Tsin there is a seminary for women teachers.
Sie Tou Fa, a prominent Chinese administrative official (who is also a governor and a lawyer), recently delivered a lecture in Paris on the status of the Chinese woman. This lecture contradicts the statements made above. Among other things he declared that China has produced too many distinguished women (in the political as well as in other fields) for law and public opinion to restrict the freedom of woman. “The Chinese admits superiority, with all its consequences, as soon as he sees it; and this, whether it is shown by man or woman.”[119]According to him there can be no woman’s rights movement in China, because man does not oppress woman! He declares that the progress of women in China since 1905 is a manifestation ofpatriotism, not of feminism. According to our experiences the opinions of Sie Tou Fa are attributable to a peculiarly masculine way of observing things.
JAPAN AND KOREA[120]
Previous to the thirteenth century the Japanese woman, when compared with the other women of the Far East, occupied a specially favored position,—as wife and mother, as scholar, author, and counselor in business and political affairs. All these rights were lost during the civil wars waged in the period between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. War and militarism are the sworn enemies of woman’s rights. A further cause of the Japanese woman’s loss of rights was the strong influence of Chinese civilization, embodied in the teachings of Confucius.
The Japanese woman was expected to be obedient; her virtues became passive and negative. In the seaports and chief cities, European influence has during the last fifty years caused changes in the dress, general bearing, and social customs of the Japanese. During the past thirty years these changes have been furtheredby the government. While Japan was rising to the rank of a great world power, she was also providing an excellent educational system for women. The movement began with the erection of girls’ schools. The Empress is the patroness of an “Imperial Educational Society,” a “Secondary School for Girls,” and “Educational Institute for the Daughters of Nobles,” and of a “Seminary for Women Teachers.” All of these institutions are in Tokio. Women formed in 1898 13 per cent of the total number of teachers.
Japanese women of wealth and women of the nobility support these educational efforts; they also support the “Charity Bazaar Society,” the Orphans’ Home, and the Red Cross Society. The Red Cross Society trained an excellent corps of nurses, as the Russo-Japanese War demonstrated.
Women are employed as government officials in the railroad offices; they are also employed in banks. Japanese women study medicine, pharmacy, and midwifery in special institutions,[121]which have hundreds of women enrolled. Many women attend commercial and technical schools. Women are engaged in industry,—at very low wages, to be sure; but this fact enables Japan to compete successfully for markets. The number of women in industry exceeds that of the men; in1900 there were 181,692 women and 100,962 men industrially engaged. In the textile industry 95 per cent of the laborers are women. Women also outnumber the men in home industries. Women’s average daily wages are 12½ cents. Women remain active in commerce and industry, for the workers are recruited from the lower classes, and they have been better able to withstand Chinese influence. Chinese law (based on the teachings of Confucius) still prevails with all its harshness for the Japanese woman.
The taxpaying Japanese becomes a voter at the age of twenty-five. The Japanese woman has no political rights. Hence a petition has been presented to Parliament requesting that women be granted the right to form organizations and to hold meetings. Parliament favored the measure. But the government is still hesitating, hence a new petition has been sent to Parliament.
The modern woman’s rights movement in Japan is supported by the following organizations: two societies favoring woman’s education, the associations for hygiene, and the society favoring dress reform. TheWomen’s Unionand theLeague of Womencan be regarded as political organizations. There are Japanese women authors and journalists.
Since Korea has belonged to Japan, changes have begun there also. The Korean women have neither a first name nor a family name. According tocircumstances they are called daughter of A. B., wife of A., etc. It is a sign of the time and also of the awakening of woman’s self-reliance that the government of Korea has been presented with a petition, signed by many women, requesting that these conditions be abolished and that women be granted the right to have their own names.
We have completed our journey round the world,—from Japan to the United States is only a short distance, and the intellectual relations between the two countries are quite intimate. Few oriental people seem more susceptible to European culture than the Japanese. But whatever woman’s rights movement there is in non-European countries, it owes its origin almost without exception to the activity of educated occidentals,—to the men and women teachers, educators, doctors, and missionaries. Here is an excellent field for our activities; here is a duty that we dare not forget in the midst of our own struggles. For we cannot estimate the noble work and uplifting power that the world loses in those countries where women are merely playthings and beasts of burden.
CONCLUSION
In the greater part of the world woman is a slave and a beast of burden. In these countries she rulesonly in exceptional cases—and then through cunning. Equality of rights is not recognized; neither is the right of woman to act on her own responsibility. Even in most countries of European civilization woman is not free or of age. In these countries, too, she exists merely as a sexual being. Woman is free and is regarded as a human being only in a very small part of the civilized world. Even in these places we see daily tenacious survivals of the old barbarity and tyranny. Hence it is not true that woman is the “weaker,” the “protected,” the “loved,” and the “revered” sex. In most cases she is the overworked, exploited, and (even when living in luxury) the oppressed sex. These circumstances dwarf woman’s humanity, and limit the development of her individuality, her freedom, and her responsibility. These conditions are opposed by the woman’s rights movement. The movement hopes to secure the happiness of woman, of man, of the child, and of the world by establishing the equal rights of the sexes. These rights are based on the recognition of equality of merit; they provide for responsibility of action. Most men do not understand this ideal; they oppose it with unconscious egotism.
This book has given an accurate account of themeansby which men oppose woman’s rights: scoffing, ridicule, insinuation; and finally, when prejudice, stubbornness, and selfishness can no longer resist theforce of truth, the argument that they do not wish to grant us our rights. There is little encouragement in this; but it shall not perplex us. Man, by opposing woman, caused the struggle between the sexes. Only equality of rights can bring peace.Womanis already certain of her equality.Manwill learn by experience that renunciation can be “manly,” that business can be “feminine,” and that all “privilege” is obnoxious. The emancipation of woman is synonymous with the education of man.
Educating is always a slow process; but it inspires limitless hope. When “ideas” have once seized the masses, these ideas become an irresistible force. This is irrefutably proved by the strong growth of our movement since 1904 in all countries of European civilization, and by the awakening of women even in the depths of oriental civilization. The events of the past five years justify us in entertaining great hopes.