be recognized as just as much worthy of remuneration as any occupation which men enter, and should be paid for (by the state) on the same
At present, there is almost universally a discrimination against women in commerce and industry. They sometimes get no more than half as much pay as men for similar grades of employment. But there is for this one good reason. An employer needs experienced help, and he expects a man to remain with him and become more valuable. He is, therefore, willing to pay more because of this anticipation. In hiring a woman, he knows that she will probably soon leave to marry. But whatever may be the origin of this discrimination, it is justified in the last analysis by the fact that a man is paid as the head of a family, a woman only as an individual who ordinarily has fewer or no dependents to support. Indeed, it is largely this feature which, under the law of supply and demand, has caused women to work for low wages.
It is evident that real economic equality between men and women must be impossible, if the women are to leave their work for long periods of time, in order to bear and rear children. It is normally impossible for a woman to earn her living by competitive labor, at the same time that she is bearing and rearing children. Either the doctrine of economic equality is largely illusory, therefore, or else it must be extended to making motherhood a salaried occupation just as much as mill work or stenography.
The feminists have almost universally adopted the latter alternative. They say that the woman who is capable of earning money, and who abandons wage-earning for motherhood, ought to receive from the state as nearly as possible what she