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Table of Contents

CHAPTER XIII

of the two sexes must use the word in a figurative sense, not ignoring the differentiation of the two sexes, as extreme feminists are inclined to do. To this differentiation we shall return later.

  1. Political equality includes the demand for the vote and for the removal of various legal restrictions, such as have sometimes prevented a wife from disposing of her own property without the consent of her husband or such as have made her citizenship follow that of her husband. In the United States, these legal restrictions are rapidly being removed, at such a rate that in some states it is now the husband who has a right to complain of certain legal discriminations.

Equal suffrage is also gaining steadily, but its eugenic aspect is not wholly clear. Theoretically much is to be said for it, as making use of woman's large social sympathies and responsibilities and interest in the family; but in the states where it has been tried, its effects have not been all that was hoped. Beneficial results are to be expected unless an objectionably extreme feminism finds support.

In general, the demand for political equality, in a broad sense, seems to the eugenist to be the most praiseworthy part of the feminist program. The abolition of those laws, which now discharge women from positions if they marry or have children, promises to be in principle a particularly valuable gain.

  1. Economic equality is often summed up in the catch phrase "equal pay for equal work." If the phrase refers to jobs where women are competing on piecework with men, no one will object to it. In practice it applies particularly to two distinct but interlocking demands: (a) that women should receive the same pay as men for any given occupation—as, stenography, for example; and (b) that child-bearing should
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