Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/283

 SCIENCE AND FEMINISM 277

��SCIENCE AND FEMINISM

Bt ROBBBT H. LOWIB, PhJ)., A3XD LBTA 8TBTTBB HOLLINQWOBTH, PhJ>.

FEMINISM demands the removal of restrictions imposed on wo- man's activity. Opponents of feminism seek to justify these re- strictions on two grounds: (1) because of imdesirable social and ethical consequences that are believed to be the necessary outcome of their re- moval; (2) because of the allied imfitness of women to undertake cer- tain forms of activity. The considerations that come imder the first head lie wholly outside the field of science ; for what is socially or ethi- cally desirable depends on the individual point of view assumed^ and has nothing to do with the objective determination of fact that constitutes scientific judgment. At best social science might establish what con- sequences would actually fiow from a removal of restrictions; but social science is at present far from being able to predict future events within its domain. Science^ then, can deal only with the arguments of the second order, the question whether woman is by nature debarred from successfully following pursuits open to man, and the present paper is confined exclusively to this problem. It is true that some scientists have categorically affirmed woman's inferior equipment, notably Professor Sedgwick in a much-advertised statement in the New York Times. In so doing they have voiced folk-lore and folk-ethics rather than science. On the other hand, avowedly feminist literature has not been free from misrepresentation of the facts. The following pages are designed to fill the long-felt want of a concise popular smnmary of the present state of knowledge in regard to the question of woman's supposedly natural disabilities.

The widespread conviction of woman's inability in certain directions is in large measure due to the fact that, to the knowledge of those dis- qualifying her, she never works and never has worked in these directions ; hence the desire on her part to perform such work appears '^unnatural." This point of view is, of course, not a strictly logical one; for even if woman had been imiformly debarred from work along certain lines, this might have been due to special historical causes and not at all to her native endowment. The occupation of typist-stenographer is at present practically monopolized by women, while a few decades ago the corre- sponding secretarial positions were uniformly filled by men. Yet we do not attribute this fact to a change in the natural fitness of the sexes to perform the required work. Nevertheless, while the argument from universal exclusion would not be rigorously demonstrative, it must be

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