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.

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    the husband. The comfort, the luxury, the ne- cessities of life itself, which the woman receives, are obtained by the husband, and given her by him. And, when the woman, left alone with no man to “ support ” her, tries to meet her own economic necessities, the difficulties which con- front her prove conclusively what the general economic status of the woman is. None can deny these patent facts,— that the economic status of women generally depends upon that of men generally, and that the economic status of women individually depends upon that of men individually, those men to whom they are related. But we are instantly confronted by the commonly received opinion that, although it must be admitted that men make and distribute the wealth of the world, yet women earn their share of it as wives. This assumes either that the husband is in the position of employer and the wife as employee, or that marriage is a “partnership,” and the wife an equal factor with the husband in producing wealth. Economic independence is a relative condition at best. In the broadest sense, all living things are economically dependent upon others,— the animals upon the vegetables, and man upon both. In a narrower sense, all social life is economically interdependent, man producing collectively what he could by no possibility pro-