Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/74

 or sole organisers of the business from the beginning. Women may enter most of the gainful occupations in France. More than five millions of them are employed in industrial, agricultural, professional, and other work. They may be doctors, lawyers, factory inspectors, education inspectors. They are teachers in the public schools, and lecturers in the universities. Madame Curie, the Russian lady who married a French professor, and who, with him, discovered radium, the wonderful new element, holds the chair of Physics in the Sorbonne. Women are employed in the Government service as telegraphists and telephonists. They are railway officials of the lower orders, and they may, if they choose, be cab-drivers.

As the old custom of keeping a woman in complete subordination has a strong hold on the minds, not only of the majority of Italian men, but of the women also, Italy is not so advanced in these matters as France. The Church is largely responsible for keeping the women in a condition of humility and of mental enslavement to these hurtful ideas. So it is in Spain. Although both Italy and Spain can boast of a host of great women who distinguished themselves in the spheres of education and literature, the world generally has moved on, leaving most of its intellectual sediment in these creed-bound lands. A