Women and economics : a study of the economic relation between men and women as a factor in social evolution / by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

  • Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860-1935
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Women and economics : a study of the economic relation between men and women as a factor in social evolution / by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/372 (page 9)
    No Inherent Disability of Sex tation, the handling of our elaborate machinery of trade, commerce, government,— these things could not be done so well by women in their present degree of economic development. This is not owing to lack of the essential human faculties necessary to such achievements, nor to any inherent disability of sex, but to the present condition of woman, forbidding the devel- opment of this degree of economic ability. The male human being is thousands of years in ad- vance of the female in economic status. Speak- ing collectively, men produce and distribute wealth; and women receive it at their hands. As men hunt, fish, keep cattle, or raise com, so do women eat game, fish, beef, or corn. As men go down to the sea in ships, and bring coffee and spices and silks and gems from far away, so do women partake of the coffee and spices and silks and gems the men bring. The economic status of the human race in any nation, at any time, is governed mainly by the activities of the male: the female obtains her share in the racial advance only through him. Studied individually, the facts are even more plainly visible, more open and familiar. From the day laborer to the millionnaire, the wife’s worn dress or flashing jewels, her low roof or her lordly one, her weary feet or her rich equi- page,—-these speak of the economic ability of