Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/471

Rh Deduct from this the comparatively small number of women of fashion whose existence is merged into the decorative part of social life, and we have here roughly grouped the lines which have defined the usefulness of women, and which have lain parallel for ages. In the midst of this toiling mass of humanity phenomenal women have appeared—women who have thrown down the dividing lines of prejudice, and created for themselves places among the most celebrated of the other sex. Those who have thus elevated themselves above the mass have demonstrated the capacity of women not only for the highest culture, but also their ability to equal men in the use of faculties which are their most distinguished attributes.

For a generation or more the question of woman's entry into employments deemed man's exclusive province has attracted attention, and raised up for woman a body of aggressive advocates of both sexes, who, by their demands, have provoked some harsh criticism from those who are in no sense the enemies of the intellectual and worldly advancement of women. Woman is now submitting her fitness to find employment, in the learned professions and skilled labor, to the rigid test of actual trial. Will she succeed, or will those of her sex, who achieve success in these fields of labor, be the exception, rather than the rule, in the future as in the past? In order to answer this question, it is my purpose to study woman in this relation, as a gynæcologist, leaving out of consideration the social aspects of the case. One, who has devoted years to the study of women and their diseases, has a right to be heard upon this vital question. I do so the more readily because I know of no gynæcologist who has devoted his special learning to the study of woman's relation to man's work as a means of subsistence and of usefulness. For our purpose, therefore, woman must be scientifically investigated as a means to the accomplishment of certain ends. She must be studied rather in her physical and mental fitness, than in relation to society in her new position. This latter part of the subject belongs to the sociologist.

An examination of the present relation of woman to the other sex will throw light upon the complex problem of her success, in the future, in these fields of usefulness. The women of savage races, except sexually, present but slight differences in physical development and mental character from the males. That they are in base servitude to the other sex is in obedience to the aggressive and belligerent character of all males of the higher order of animals. This has the force of a law. The moral subjection of woman to the other sex is fundamentally a sexual peculiarity. With the slow advent of civilization the differences between the sexes increased. With no lessening of subjugation the capacity of woman for gross labor decreased, and from man's equal, physically, she became only his equal mentally. The chivalry of the middle ages of Europe kept viable the principle