this; which seeks to minimize the difference between the two sexes. It may be broadly described as a movement which seeks to remove all discrimination based on sex. It is a movement to secure recognition of an equality of the two sexes. The feminists variously demand that woman be recognized as the equal of man (1) biologically, (2) politically, (3) economically.
- Whether or not woman is to be regarded as biologically equal to man depends on how one uses the word "equal." If it is meant that woman is as well adapted to her own particular kind of work as is man to his, the statement will readily be accepted. Unfortunately, feminists show a tendency to go beyond this and to minimize differentiation in their claims of equality. An attempt is made to show that women do not differ materially from men in the nature of their capacity of mental or physical achievement. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman makes the logical application by demanding that little girls' hair be cut short and that they be prevented from playing with dolls in order that differences fostered in this way be reduced.
In forming a judgment on this proposition, it must be remembered that civilization covers not more than 10,000 years out of man's history of half a million or more. During 490,000 out of the 500,000 years, man was the hunter and warrior; while woman stayed at home of necessity to bear and rear the young, to skin the prey, to prepare the food and clothing. He must have a small knowledge of biology who could suppose that this long history would not lead to any differentiation of the two sexes; and the biologist knows that man and woman in some respects differ in every cell of their bodies: that, as Jacques Loeb says, "Man