Feminism - Women and Memory Forum

WOMEN AND WORK 219
care ol themselves. But the real education of boys should aim
at their taking care, not of themselves alone, but of others. This
is not necessary on the part of girls ; and so, if they are educated
like boys, and boys like them, either they are educated too much,
or the boys too little. The effort, at all events, is to do the
former.*^ But now if the girl, so trained, after all marries, her
education is, as we have seen, either useless in her vocation as
mother, or positively prejudicial. Even preparation as a physician
is wasteful to the mother, as it would be cheaper and safer
to employ, when needed, a doctor who has wider experience.*^
Now, to-day four-fifths of the girls eventually marry, which
figure may before long be reduced to three-fifths, while of boys
probably nine-tenths will carry on the profession for which they
have studied. The chances, then, are nine in ten that your
son's education will pay; and they are at least three to one that
your daughter's education will be thrown away. And this waste
of money spent on the girl's education (whether by the parents,
or by philanthropists, or by the state) means that less than otherwise
can be spent on the education of the boys, who would profit
by it to the ultimate benefit of the girls also.
Another avowed intention is likewise not reached. At present,
if a boy has better prospects than a girl of making his fortune by
his own efforts, the girl has the prospect of marrying a man as
good as her brother, and so their prospects in life are equal.
This is forgotten, or rather it is not desired that the girl's prospects
shall be dependent on marriage, and so the intention is to
equalise their prospects of self-advancement by equal preparation
for the professions. But the girl will still have the opportunity
of marrying, if she chooses, and so will have a double
advantage. Consider the case of a young man of twenty-five
and a young woman of the same age, who have both gone
through college and a professional or technical school and are
prepared for their "life-work" (at least his, but not necessarily
hers), in some profession, science, or art. If they are normal
young people, they will both expect to love and to marry, but in
that event the man has the prospect of needing to support his
wife, and the woman has the prospect of being supported by her
husband. Can anybody maintain that their prospects in life
are the same ? that they have been put on a footing of equality ?
46 " Modern American education," says Clarke, " has a maxim, that boys' schools
and girls' schools are one, and that one is the boys' school," Sex in Education, 123,
124, cf. 130, 159. Thus a feminist: " We can't afford to differentiate, as yet at
least. To give women as ' ' good an education as men, we must give them the same
education," Elsie Clews Parsons, Feminism and Conventionality, Annals Amer. Acad.
Pol. and Soc. Science, Nov., 1914, p. 47- . , ,
47 Cf. W. Briigelmann, Die Frauenbewegung im besonderen und ate sociale Bewegung
im allgemeinen, Leipzig, I907i P. 7-