WHAT WOMEN STILL WANT
By RAY STRACHEY
IT is fashionable among the young. women from the Universities nowadays to assert that they are not " feminists," and to display no interest whatever in a controversy so completely out of date. as " women7s rights." They do, of course, assume that the world is theirs to conquer. They grew up to the athletics, latch- keys, chequebooks and personal freedom of judgement Which.. cost such bitter struggles in the nineteenth cen- tury, and they take for granted the education and en- franchisement which were the objectives of the women's movement before they were born. They never knew, and Cannot .easily imagine, ,a world in which they were seriously expected to consider themselves inferior beings, And so, being in fact ingrained and unself-conscious feminists, they easily repudiate the whole concern, and can devote themselves happily to flirtation and other normal feminine amusements, without a thought for the earnest and desperate campaigns which made possible their present light-heartedness.
This frame of mind is fairly widespread among the young; , but it undergoes an abrupt and interesting Change as soon as any of the existing sex-disabilities are encountered. The modern girl is outraged if her freedom is abridged, and she realizes her position in the labour Market With astonishment and indignation. As things are, the drive of economic necessity makes effective pro- test almost impossible, but the thoughts and feelings Which rise up in her mind have a very strong family like- ness to those of the suffragists and suffragettes of twenty and thirty years ago.
Though it is the same in feeling, the modern women's movement is different in content from the pre-War kind, because it is concerned now almost completely with the economic position of women. There are indeed many things concerning the lives of women with which women's societies are concerned—health, housing, and social questions of all sorts and kinds, many of which bear somewhat differently upon women than upon men. But these questions are part of citizenship, and are not so Much a " cause " as a continuing process, the necessary consequence of enfranchisement. Feminism, though it may ,find .a point here and there of legal disability or ad- ininistrative inequality, and though it has the large question of the nationality of married women still to adjust, is really concerned nowadays with the position of women as earners. In this field there are endless_ injus- tices and discriminations based on sex, and hi these days of financial stress all hindrances to earning capacity bite very deep. There is hardly a family in the land in Which the earning capacity of the women members is un- important today, yet in 99 out of every 100 callings that earning capacity is drastically reduced, below the market capacity value of the worker, because she is a female ; and against that state of affairs the women's movement is necessarily at war.
In broad outline the position is this. Women are admitted to almost all professions (the Church and the Diplomatic Service being the main exceptions) and they arc employed in some parts of the work of almost all industries. With the exception of the stage and the. House of commons, however, they arc paid less than men over the entire field, and in the State services the general run of difference is about a fifth, even where the work is identical and interchangeable.
In industrial work direct comparison between men's and women's work is avoided, because of the customary demarcation between men's and women's prOcesses ; but the upshot is that almost all the unskilled and unprogressive work falls to the women's share, while the better paid and managerial posts are practically reserved - to men. In addition to this there are binding agreements, with the force almost of laws, which prevent the employ- ment of women on a number of processes which during the War they performed with success, and there are a very large number of contracts which prevent the employment of women if they are married.
Whether because of the type of work, or because of a special differential salary scale, the Upshot of this is that women do not earn much money ; and their low pay itself involves further diSabilities. For health and unemployment-insurance women's contributions are less than men's, and their benefits are not only less in proportion, but even lower still, while married women have extra penalties in regard to both insurances. They face, too, a widespread unwillingness to entrust them with positions of authority, and the curious remains of the old attitude towards women which Makes some men feel that it is " derogatory to their manhood " to serve under a woman chief. It would be difficult to find any woman of experience in any field of work who would not agree that for one of her own sex to make even a moderate success she must have more ability, and ten times more toughness, than any com- peting male. In spite of all this, however, women arc entering the labour market in increasing numbers. Something approaching 75 per cent. of the unmarried women under thirty are wage-earners, and a rapidly increasing number of married women are also seeking work. In some towns as many as 33 per cent. of the married women are earning, and of the whole female population between the ages of 15 and 65 not much more than one in two is supported by a " breadwinner."
Taken together these facts create a situation which is not only difficult for women but dangerous for men. Women are—all unwillingly—undercutting them, and the result is an inevitable trop in the standard of living, and a change in the conditions of home life which may lead far. * It amounts, indeed, to a new industrial revolution ; and "it is apparently as much ignored by sociologists as was its predecessor.
There are, of course, a thousand different angles from which this matter can be considered, and a thousand interacting factors which produced this state of affairs, From the plain feminist point of view, however, the matter is simple because of the blank injustice of the- present plan. From this angle the solution lies in a true equality of opportunity, a " fair field and no favour." If women can do good work and hold good jobs, let them_ do so, and be paid for it. Let them choose for themselves, without discriminations either for or against them, and let the adjustment of men's and women's work follow the lines of natural capacity, and -have as many exceptions on either side as talent or inclination may suggest.
This is a simple creed to state, but a hard one to implement in the confusion and cross-currents of modern conditions. The women's movement, with this goal before it, has a long fight ahead, and is as yet barely half-way to success. The methods, the war-cries and the whole atmosphere of the affair have changed com- pletely since the suffrage days, and the movement is not so much a conscious propaganda as an experience of daily life. But it is none the less a movement, and one which is desperately alive. The young women may protest as they will that feminism does not interest them, and that the whole thing is out of date. It is sure to catch them, one and all, in the end.
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