Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/475

Rh the number of women fitted by inherited traits to occupy this advanced field. But we have shown that the laws of sexual selection and of population are entirely opposed to the increase of women thus favored, and in favor of the average woman by a large per centum.

I am inclined to regard all forces which have hitherto acted, and yet continue to act, upon the great mass of humanity in the creation of sentiments common to the majority upon a given subject, as acting with the force of a law. I conceive, therefore, that there is yet another law which explains, and tends to perpetuate, the present relation of women to the other sex and to society. This is the law of public opinion. The exponents of public opinion upon this subject are the women themselves. I do not think any one will controvert me when I assert that a vast majority of women are opposed to their own sex entering the professions. One would naturally suppose that, in the matter of religion, a woman's opinion is as good as a man's; that, with equal learning and experience, a woman is as competent to discharge pastoral duties as a man (I am assuming the physical equality of the sexes); and yet you may count upon the fingers of one hand the number of pulpits filled successfully by women in this great country. In this country women are free to enter the medical profession; but, with about as many exceptions as that of women filling pulpits, they are gaining but a precarious and scanty support. Now, in both the professions named, women are retarded by the force of opinion of their own sex. In all social questions, women wield a great influence. In these matters they are the throne, and the power behind the throne. In Protestant congregations, if women were a unit in favor of women preaching, women would preach in a fair proportion of church organizations. If a woman made a free choice of a physician of her own sex, there is scarce a household in which she would be denied her choice. Women seem to lack confidence in their own sex in this position. In the desperate diseases peculiar to women, the sorely afflicted ones seek the medical man instead of the medical woman. The future has yet to produce the anomaly of the female ovariotomist. In the literature of medicine there has been but one Boivin, and but one La Chapelle. The reliance upon man in moments of bodily peril is easily explained; it is an inherited trait, strengthened by education.

I have said enough to explain philosophically the present relation of women to the other sex, and to society. It is this relation which has, in the past, regulated woman's admission into the professions and skilled labor. But we have now to accept the fact that women have entered the professions to contend with man in the struggle for existence. In this struggle, I presume, women expect no favors. In this new field of contest all they ought to ask for is a fair chance to win—the same chances man must take. But, in view of her present relation, and the radical physical differences between the sexes, have they a fair chance, and can they take the chances of man and reach his level