CHAPTER IV

WHAT ABOUT THE WOMEN?

NOT so very different from the charge that we were misled when told that the workers would prevent so calamitous a thing as a world war, is the statement that we were likewise deceived when induced to believe that the women would stand united against war. It was clear that the workers had everything to lose and little to gain by fighting the battles of their rulers, but it was no less clear that the women had as much, if not more, to lose than the workers. And surely, it was argued, the women know the awful cost of war in suffering and sacrifice.

The answer to the sneer that when we depended upon the women to prevent war we were leaning on a broken reed, is of much the same character as that in reference to the workers. If the women failed to preserve peace it was, in the first place, because they were not organised, and, in the second place, because they had practically no political

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power and certainly no direct vote in determining international matters.

But this condition, too, it seems altogether likely will be changed after the war. As with the workers, so with the women, they have been called upon to do unprecedented tasks in the several fighting nations. It will not do to ignore, nor treat lightly the rôle that the women have played in this grim drama. The dénouement has proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that in respects other than purely idealistic they are the peers of their brothers. With equal patriotism they have responded to the appeal for sacrifice and service, and this has been as true of the princess as of the peasant.

The awakening of the women has not waited for the bugle reveille. The Feminist Movement is a part of the great democratic movement of modern times. The advance of women, during the past few decades, has meant that an ever-increasing number have protested against arbitrary sex discrimination, against presumptuous masculine despotism, against domestic drudgery, industrial parasitism, economic dependence and political disability.

We need not here discuss in detail these several phases of the Woman Movement. It is as true of "feminism" as it is of so many other reforms of

one kind and another, the war has put a stop to all direct propaganda and meliorative legislation. And yet, as a matter of fact, what do we find has actually happened? We find that in mobilising the nations (not merely the armies) no arbitrary lets and hindrances have been thrown in the way of woman's employment anywhere and everywhere,in home, or shop, or hospital, or on the farm, or in connection with transportation lines. There is no time for the idle discussion of fine-spun theories as to the intellectual inferiority or industrial incompetency of women, as such. Nations engaged in a life-and-death struggle cannot afford to discriminate on account of sex. What "despotism" there is to-day is military, or governmental for military reasons, and it limits and controls the freedom of action of all alike. Military necessity is no respecter of persons.

As for that aspect of the Woman Movement which has concerned itself primarily with the problem of excessive drudgery in the business of home-making and house-keeping, it may be noted that the war has inspired the invention of many labour-saving devices that should reduce the heart-breaking strain and tax of what Arnold Bennett has felicitously called "domestic dailiness." Also, under the compulsion

of necessity, many schemes have been introduced and many projects put into practical operation, in the way of community washing and cooking and serving.

As for a special class of industrial parasites, who live on the labour of others and feel keenly the shame of selfish indulgence and social futility, this class of women has, at any rate temporarily, ceased to exist. A nation in arms, availing itself of every last resource, material and human, can neither afford to feed the lazy nor tolerate the idle. Few stories of the war are more thrilling than those that tell of women of wealth and fashion who, unlike the rich young ruler, have not made the Great Refusal.1 They have left all and taken up their cross of denial and sacrifice.

Take also the matter of economic independence. To be sure, the fight to obtain equal pay for equal work has not yet been won, but between two and three million additional women have entered the ranks of gainful occupations. In England, threequarters of a million are working in munition factories alone. Can old prejudices prevail long in the face of these facts? Surely several steps, not to

1 See the Report of Dr. William Graham, Medical Superintendent of the Belfast District Asylum, reprinted in Current History for November, 1916.

say strides, have been taken in the direction of economic independence. It does not seem probable that these steps will be retraced and that this advance will be followed by retrogression.

No matter what may be thought of the Feminist Movement as a whole, there is little reason to believe that governments will refuse, after this war, to give the women more power in legislation. The extension of the franchise so as to include women, while not a foregone conclusion, seems altogether likely. Indeed Denmark and Iceland and four provinces of Canada have already enfranchised their women since the war began and the probability that the women of England will win the suffrage amounts almost to a certainty. The war has given the women an extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate their equality with men in numberless agricultural, industrial, commercial and social activities, and so, by inference, their equal intelligence and fitness to exercise the franchise. It is not unreasonably urged that if they can work and make guns for their country they can also vote and make laws for their country. On sentimental grounds alone it is hard to see how the Governments can longer deny to women a share in the conduct of the affairs of the nation which they so heroically and