University of Virginia Library

5. REVERSAL OF THE CANONS OF SOCIAL LIFE FOR THE RESPECTIVE SEXES ACCORDING AS MEN OR WOMEN RULE. PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

OWNERSHIP and occupation are the two things which mainly give the stamp to social life. In this respect, likewise, monosexual dominance is decisive of the rôle of the sexes in social relationships, for the dominant sex and the subordinate sex always play the same respective parts no matter which sex holds sway.

Where monosexual dominance is absolute, the right of ownership is always vested exclusively in the dominant sex. The subordinate sex has no property of its own. We are all familiar with this restriction of the right of ownership to the dominant sex as far as the Men's State is concerned. Here the man alone owns property. The proprietary rights of the male are especially conspicuous in marriage, for in the Men's State the wife has no proprietary rights whatever. But though every one is familiar with this allotment of the right of ownership in the Men's State, few people are aware that it has a precise counterpart in the Women's State. Just as in the psychology of the amatory life and in that of conjugal life, so also as concerns ownership and the material basis of marriage, the same principle of reversal prevails, so that the rôles of men and women arc similarly interchanged.

Whereas, for example, it is the rule that under masculine predominance the woman contributes a dowry whilst the man is the property owner, under feminine dominance we find that the husband contributes a dowry, and that the wife is the property owner.

Where women are dominant, this tendency is manifest, both among primitive folk and in civilised nations. In ancient Egypt, the husband always brought a dowry into the marriage, and it became the property of his wife. This custom prevailed as late as the Ptolemaic era. In the earlier days of Egyptian civilisation women were alone entitled to own property. It is true that Müller, who is obsessed by the ideology of the Men's State, opines that the Greeks were guilty of exaggeration when they declared that all the possessions of an Egyptian bridegroom were made over to his bride. But there was no exaggeration. The reports of Greek observers have been confirmed by subsequent investigations. As late as the days of Darius, the wife said of the dowry brought by her husband: "It is my property." Again, in its oldest form the word "wife" signified in Egypt: "The one who clothes her husband." We may presume this to mean that the wife was responsible for the expenditure on clothing. We learn from Wiedemann's hieratic texts that when marriage was contracted the house became the sole property of the wife. In this connexion there is an interesting letter dating from 1100 B.C. A man had given a tenant farmer notice to quit. But the man's wife wished to keep the farmer as tenant, and it was regarded as self-evident that her will should prevail. The relevant passage in the letter runs as follows:[1] "I have come back to the capital.

[1] Erman and Krebs, Aus den Papyrus der königlichen Museen.

I had told you that I did not want you to till the land any longer. But now my wife and housemate, who rules my home, has said, `Do not take away the land from PA-neb-en-uzad; assign it to him and let him till it.' As soon, therefore, as my letter reaches you, you can get to work once more on the land."

We see that the husband, in his communication to the farmer, implies that his wife's will is the only thing that counts. Were the change of plans due merely to complaisance on his part, he would have said, "I have yielded to my wife," or have used some similar phrase. But he merely tells the farmer that his wife has expressed her wishes, and therefore the farmer can stay on as tenant. There is nothing more to be said about the matter.

Turning to Sparta, we have an express declaration on the part of Plutarch[2] that women there were the sole property owners. Meiners considers that this exclusive right of the Spartan women to hold property was a direct outcome of their dominance. It is plain, too, from Plutarch's reports concerning the party struggles under Agis and Leonidas, that power, wealth, and ownership were exclusively vested in the women of Sparta.[3]

In the case of those primitive folk among whom women were dominant, there is no lack of detailed and unambiguous information to the effect that women were the sole property owners. This was the case among the Chamorros, the Cantabri, the Balonda, the Iroquois, the Lycians, the Kamchadales, the Nicaraguans, the Zambesis, and many others. Among such peoples, the husband could not sell any-

[2] I, 190.

[2] Agis, 7.

thing without his wife's permission. We find among the Chamorros a typical instance of the way in which, under the dominance of women, the husband brings the dowry whilst the wife is the sole property owner. Here it was always the husband who contributed the dowry, never the wife. If the husband had no property to contribute when he married, he became the wife's servant. All the property belonged to the wife, and she retained everything in the event of a divorce. When a man died, all the property remained in the hands of the wife; at a woman's death, on the other hand, the heritage passed to her children and other blood relations, and never to her husband, who had absolutely no right to dispose of the property independently. Conditions were similar among the Iroquois in the days when feminine dominance prevailed. Among the Lycians, where women were also dominant, the mother had the sole right to dispose of property, and daughters were the only inheritors. A son could inherit nothing. Among the Kamchadales, the husbands had no property rights. The wives owned all the property of a married pair, and even allowanced the husbands' tobacco as they pleased. Meiners writes: "The dependence, or rather the subordination, of the Kamchadale men goes so far that they make no complaint because their wives have the sole right of disposal over the family possessions, and because the husbands are only allowed to use what they require in accordance with the pleasure of the ruling women."

Strabo reports that among the Cantabri the daughters were the only heritors. Brothers were supplied with what they needed by their sisters. Among the Nayars of the Malabar coast, where women were dominant, only the daughters could inherit.

Far more significant psychologically than the relationship between property-owing and dominance, is the determination of the division of labour between the sexes by the question whether men or women hold sway. It is a very general belief that the contemporary division of labour between the sexes is the outcome of specifically sexual, specifically masculine and feminine, peculiarities. Already in the days of Socrates the opinion prevailed that the nature of the sexes was decisive as regards the division of labour. It seemed incontestable that men were suited for such occupations as were carried on away from home, whereas "woman, who is weak and timid, is predestined, as if by divine command, to occupy herself with domestic affairs." But with the aid of our comparative study of the history of monosexual dominance we shall be able to show that this ancient assumption is false. We can prove that the division of labour between the sexes is not determined by inherited differences between men and women, and that it depends solely upon monosexual dominance. In Women's States we find precisely the same tendency to the division of labour between the sexes that we find in Men's States, the only difference being that the rôles of the sexes are reversed. Where woman rules, the women carry on the occupations outside the home, whilst the men look after the household and care for the family. But when man rules he insists that "woman's place is the home," and declares that outside occupations are a masculine prerogative.[4] The dominant sex, male or female as the case may be, tends to restrict the subordinate sex to work in the home and to family cares.

[4] Cf. Bucura, Die Eigenart des Weibes, 1918.

The behaviour of dominant women in this respect is exactly like the behaviour of dominant men.

We find this both among civilised nations and among primitive folk. Ancient Egypt, in earlier days, was unquestionably familiar with the reversal of the division of labour as between the sexes. The reversal must have been in force as late as the time of Herodotus. He relates that in Egypt the women, in contradistinction to the customs prevailing among other nations, were engaged in masculine occupations, practising commerce and frequenting the markets, whereas the men sat at home weaving, and in general looked after the housework. The Talmud confirms Herodotus' statement, for it tells us that the children of Israel during the captivity were indignant because, when in Egypt, the Jewish men were compelled to do women's work, whereas the Jewish women were set to the tasks of men.[5] We cannot suppose that the reversal of rôles was due to the servile status of the Jews, for had this been the case the labours appropriate to the subordinate sex among the Egyptians would have been assigned, as a mark of contempt, to both sexes of the enslaved race.

The reversal of rôles in the division of labour is equally plain, as regards Egypt, in a passage we find in the OEdipus at Colonus of Sophocles (339 et seq.)[6] OEdipus says to his two daughters: "How you imitate the manners of the Egyptians in your ways of thought and your mode of life! In Egypt the men stay at home and sit at the looms, whilst the women go abroad to seek the necessaries of life. And they whom it beseemed to care for my needs sit at home

[5] According to Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. i, the Israelites were in Egypt about 1300 B.C.

[6] Cf. Bachofen, op. cit., p. 100.

like maidens, whilst you in their place weary yourselves to relieve my miseries."

In addition, Bachofen refers to Nymphodorus of Syracuse as having confirmed Herodotus' reports. Bachofen also tells us that King Sesostris is said to have been the first who imposed women's work on men.

The reversed rôle of women in social life is plainly indicated by the fact (to which Herodotus expressly refers) that the duty of maintaining parents was incumbent upon daughters and not upon sons. Obviously sons could not discharge this obligation in a social system where women were the sole property-owners, where the right of inheritance was reserved for women, and where women were the only breadwinners.

Many additional traits of ancient Egyptian life bear witness to the reversal of the division of labour. For example, let us consider the Egyptian "Liturgies."[7] This term, from the Greek λειτουργια, denotes a public office or duty which the richer citizens discharged at their own expense. Some of these seem to have been performed by men and some by women. Wills of the Ptolemaic era are extant showing that sons and daughters inherited such liturgies from father and mother. Here, indeed, we have an indication of the equal rights of the sexes, a matter to which we shall return. But even at this late period we find that the women were still active outside the home. In connexion with court occupations of the Ptolemaic days women are referred to as "bearers of the prize of battle and bearers of the basket."[8]

[7] Erman and Krebs, op. cit.

[8] κανηfοροι.

In a previous chapter we have referred to the oldest Egyptian poems that have come down to us. These contain evidence that women were engaged in occupations outside the home. Fowling was an important occupation in Egypt, and would appear in early days to have been reserved for women, seeing that the word "fowler" is always used in the feminine. Laundry work, on the other hand, would seem from the poems to have been an exclusively masculine avocation. Men, too, prepared the nuptial couch, providing the finest linen and the most costly essences. One of the poems, written by a woman, shows that her domestic affairs were attended to by a man. According to Erman, at a later period a woman would help her husband to look after the housework. The implication is that at this date housework was still regarded as a masculine occupation.

We have another remarkable indication of the fact that in ancient Egypt the women were concerned with extra-domestic occupations whilst the men did the housework. Herodotus tells us that in Egypt, "where everything was topsy-turvy," the sexes even relieved the calls of nature in the reverse of the customary way, for the women stood up to make water whereas the men adopted a crouching posture. The latter point is peculiarly striking.

In the days when the dominance of women was absolute, the assignment of domestic work to the males probably included the care of infants in arms. In the case of the Libyans we have reports as to their manners and customs during the period when women held sway, and we learn from these that there was a complete reversal of the division of labour familiar to ourselves. In Libya, not only did the men do the house-

work, but they took care of the little children, and in especial looked after the feeding of children.[9]

Diodorus[10] writes as follows: "All authority was vested in the women, who discharged every kind of public duty. The men looked after domestic affairs, just as the women do among ourselves, and did as they were told by their wives. They were not allowed to undertake war service, or to exercise any of the functions of government, or to fill any public office, such as might have given them more spirit to set themselves up against the women. The children were handed over immediately after birth to the men, who reared them on milk and other food suitable to their age."

There are definite indications that in ancient Egypt, likewise, the men had the care of infants in arms and looked after their feeding. It is recorded that the royal princes and princesses had male nurses as late as the days of the Middle Kingdom. Erman writes that these men who had the care of the princes and who ranked among the highest persons about the court "used, strangely enough, to speak of themselves as the princes' nurses. Thus, during the reign of Amenhotep I, Prince El Kab was the nurse of the royal prince Uadmes, and Semnut, the favourite of Queen Chnemtomun, was the male nurse of the royal princess Ranofre." Again, in the days of the Middle Kingdom, a [male] "guardian of the diadem" boasts of having "given suck to the God" and of having "adorned Horus the Lord of the Palace." Of course Erman misinterprets the significance of this designation "nurse." He regards it as nothing more than an

[9] Cf. Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. ii.

[10] III, 51.

honorary title, which seems to him "a very strange one." Under a later king, Chuenaten (Amenhotep IV), there is mention of a woman nurse "the great nurse who gave suck to the God and adorned the King." This time Erman believes that the reference is to a real nurse!

It is most probable that these men described as nurses among the Egyptians did actually discharge the duties of a nurse, caring for infants in arms and seeing to their food, just as men did among the Libyans. Even if we are to suppose they were merely teachers in the royal family, and that the title "nurse" was a survival not carrying with it the obligation to undertake the duties of a nurse, the very title, though honorary, suggests that such duties must have been real in earlier generations. As a fact, however, we have no reason to assume, with Erman, that these male nurses were nurses only in an honorary sense. Erman is led astray by the Men's-State ideology. Because, as far as his experience goes, none but women tend infants in arms, he jumps to the conclusion that the title "nurse" applied to a man can have no serious meaning.

In Libya, a State contemporary with and bordering upon ancient Egypt, and one in which women were dominant, there was a complete reversal of the division of labour as we know it to-day." As previously explained, not only did the Libyan men do all the housework, but they took care of the children from infancy onwards. We have a detailed description of the way in which they cared for nurselings. Ploss and Bartels note as "a strange phenomenon" this

[11] Ploss and Bartels, op. cit., vol. ii.

interchange of sexual rôles, but do not seem to have an inkling of its true significance.

Similar facts regarding male nurses are reported in the case of other peoples.[12] "The father feeds his little ones, and carries them about caressing them tenderly." A vestige of this Women's-State custom is found in India to-day, where men act as nurses to European children. We are told that they make excellent nurses, and also excellent sick-nurses. Among the Battas the care of children is entirely in the hands of the men. In the case of the Basque-Iberian stocks, where women held sway, we have the authority of Strabo and of Humboldt as to the prevalence of a similar custom. The women did the field work, and children were entrusted to the care of the men immediately after birth. Among these tribes, moreover, the father of a new-born child was treated like a lying-in woman. The custom has prevailed on into recent times. In this connexion we may note that as late as 1800 a characteristic incident showed the political influence of women among the Basques, for when in this year a popular vote was taken the women exercised the suffrage as well as the men.

According to Westermarck among the blackfellows of Encounter Bay in South Australia it was regarded as absolutely indispensable that the father should care for the children. If, therefore, a woman bore a child after the father had died, she killed this posthumous infant. The same custom is reported of the Creeks.

Herein, according to the authors of the present work, is to be found the true explanation of the couvade, of the putting of the father to bed when his

[12] Jaeckel, op. cit., pp. 90 et seq.

wife bears a child. Innumerable reasons have been suggested for the prevalence of this strange custom, but its true ground has escaped notice owing to the dominance of Men's-State ideology. The couvade prevails or has prevailed very widely. For days, and sometimes for weeks, after the birth of a child, the father takes to his bed and is treated as if he were a lying-in woman, whilst the mother gets up to pursue her ordinary avocations. It seems most probable that the custom is intimately connected with the Women's-State obligation that the father shall care for the new-born infant. Presumably the father stays in bed during the first days after the birth of a child in order to keep the latter warm, for this is most essential in the case of new-born infants. The couvade is a practical survival from the days of women's rule.

We have also unambiguous information concerning the Kamchadales that a reversed division of labour was attendant on feminine dominance. When women ruled in Kamchatka, the men not only did the cooking but all the rest of the housework, the sewing, and the laundry work, docilely doing everything assigned to them by the women. The men are so domesticated, says Meiners, that they greatly dislike being away from home for more than one day. "Should a longer absence than this become necessary, they try to persuade their wives to accompany them, for they cannot get on without the women folk." Such traits are characteristic of the house-wife in the Men's State. The love of home and the dependence on the spouse are, as we see, faithfully reflected in the husbands of the Women's State. For these men, home is the world. When away from home they cannot feel at ease without the protection and the company of their

wives. Among the Kamchadales, moreover, we learn from Ellis that the women built the houses.

In this matter of the division of labour, the character traits of men in the Men's State are likewise reproduced down to the smallest details in the women of the Women's State. Among ourselves to-day, men refuse to engage in what they term feminine occupations, not because they do not know how to do them, but because they consider such work beneath their masculine dignity. For example, the man of the house, in our western lands, would scorn the task of patching and mending the family clothing, and would consider it beneath him even to sew on a button. Now, precisely as in the Men's State men despise "women's work," so in the Women's State do women despise "men's work." Under the changed conditions, a man's work is beneath a woman's dignity; she thinks it would demean her to undertake any of the duties that are allotted to the subordinate sex. Not even a promise of high pay could induce a Kamchadale woman to undertake sewing, laundry work, and similar services." In Kamchatka these were a man's tasks. There was only one way in which members of the exploring party in Kamchatka could bribe the Kamchadale women to undertake tasks regarded by them with such contempt. This was "by the gratification of their sensual appetite." The point is worth noting because it is so characteristic of mono-sexual dominance to find the dominant sex repaying the subordinate sex for sexual services. Where men rule, it is the way of men to reward women for their caresses, and the practice of course tends to degen-

[13] Meiners, Geschichte, etc., vol. i, pp. 27 et seq.; History, etc., vol. i. pp. 23 et seq.

crate into feminine prostitution. Where women rule, we find the obverse of this tendency; women reward men for the gifts of love.

There is plain evidence that the position of predominance is the reason why the men of the Men's State despise typically feminine tasks, and why the women of the Women's State despise typically masculine tasks. For there is no refusal, in either case, when a member of the subordinate sex is asked to undertake some occupation usually regarded as appropriate to members of the dominant sex. On the contrary, in the Men's State women are proud when they can do men's work just as efficiently as the men. They do not consider that men's occupations are degrading; they feel that, as members of the subordinate sex, they are lifted by such occupations to the level of the dominant sex. We have, therefore, in such instances, nothing to do with a specifically feminine or masculine aptitude for some particular occupation. The determinative factor is sexual dominance.

Among the Lapps[14] there was a reversed division of labour. The men did all the housework, the cooking, and the sewing. The women went fishing and were excellent sailors. Leather-dressing, which was one of the chief occupations in Lapland, was also women's work. The same fact is reported by Livingstone in the case of the Balonda, among whom the women ruled and were the bread-winners.

In the land of Adel (a province of Abyssinia) where according to Jaeckel "women enjoyed great freedom"

[read, "held sway"] the women did all the hard work, whilst the men were engaged in such tasks as to us

[14] Herbert Spencer, in his Principles of Biology, pointed out ihat the women of Lapland occupied a "free" position.

seem essentially women's work—sewing, for instance. According to Mungo Park, in Africa, speaking generally, all the boys were taught to sew. Among some of the Malay tribes and in certain regions of Peru the women tilled the land whilst the men did the housework. In Tibet, women were the bread-winners; the women traded as far as the confines of India; they undertook great enterprises. Burdach[15] relates that among the negroes, among most of the American indigens, in Chile, in Tibet, and in Siam, the women tilled the land. Burdach is merely expressing an opinion that is still generally held when he attributes this reversal in the division of labour to the "sloth of the men, and to the greater alertness and skill of the women, among savage peoples." Again and again, where women are found to do all the field work, the informants are of opinion that the men must have led idle lives, exploiting the women. Typical, in this respect, are the accounts concerning our Teutonic forefathers. Here, we are told, that the women did all the work, and in especial the farm work, tilling the land and looking after the cattle, whilst the men took their case and "lounged on bearskins." Manifestly, in all these accounts, we have to do with a misunderstanding of the reversal of the division of labour under feminine dominance. Where women ruled, and where women worked outside the homes (tilling the soil, when the tribe was agricultural), the men were no more idlers than women are idlers where men rule. The men in such cases did the housework, and cared for the children with great zeal. They had no thought of imposing the heavier tasks on their wives and of thus exploiting the women

[15] Die Physiologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft, vol. i, p. 347. folk. It was precisely in the days when women did the most arduous work that the men had no authority over the women, inasmuch as the male sex was subordinate.

To-day an investigator who had grown up in a Women's State and who should then pay a visit to our own Men's State and there observe that the arduous work away from the home was being mainly or almost exclusively done by men, would certainly derive the impression that our women were leading slothful lives and were mercilessly exploiting our men. No such visitor from a Women's State would ever hit upon the notion that this sex, comprised of those who groan under the burden of extra-domestic occupations and who produce the unmistakable impression of being downtrodden, is in truth the dominant sex. In like manner a traveller from a Men's State who sees women sweating at field work, believes them to be exploited by lazy males, whereas in this case the women form the dominant sex. The misunderstanding has always been easy when observers from a Men's State have studied Women's-State customs and institutions. All the more easy was it for such an observer to overlook the fact that the men in these cases were not loafers, but were busily occupied at home, for domestic occupations did not come under his purview at all. Furthermore, among ourselves to-day, a great many women (especially in the upper circles) do actually lead idle lives. Conversely, there must have been a similar stratum of male idlers in the Women's State. Travellers, at any rate those who write books, make acquaintances chiefly among the upper circles; and we may assume that the upper-class men of the Women's State must have led a life no

less slothful than that with which we ourselves are so familiar in the case of the upper-class women of the Men's State. Among the well-to-do, even to-day, the men have as a rule some active occupation away from home, whereas their womenkind lead a life of absolute inertia, not even doing any housework. In the contemporary Men's State, the tendency is to employ more menservants in proportion as the family rises in the social scale. It follows that a visitor from abroad, besides seeing all the arduous work outside the home done by men, would find that in the houses of the well-to-do a great deal of the housework was being done by men. He would certainly believe that the men were the only workers, and that the women were idlers. Obviously a foreign visitor to a Women's State would derive the converse impression, would think that the women worked while the men lazed.

A reversal of the division of labour is reported of the Lydians, who are known to have lived under the dominance of women. In Lydia, Herodotus saw a mortuary monument which he described as the greatest work of the kind in the world next to those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians. Upon the pillars at the time of his visit was still to be read a statement that the greater part of the construction had been done by women. Of the same monument Strabo tells us that it was mainly built by girls. Another remark of Strabo's shows how widely diffused in the Europe of his day was the reversal of the division of labour. This is what he writes concerning the Celtae: "They have in common with a great many peoples that the tasks of men and of women are the opposite of those with which we are familiar."

Parenthetically let us remark that the talent many

men display for cooking (for sometimes men actually excel women in this art) is less surprising than certain authorities imagine. Treitschke[16] writes: "From the days of the kings of Egypt down to those of our nineteenth-century epicures, the greatest experts in the culinary art have always been men." As far as ancient Egypt is concerned, it is natural that men should have been the culinary experts, for there women ruled, and the kitchen was part of man's sphere of work. But if Treitschke were right in his contention that to-day, when the rôles of the sexes have been reversed, and when work in the kitchen is within the domain of women's occupations, man nevertheless excels woman in the art of cooking, we should have to infer that men have a greater natural aptitude for cooking. It is, however, just as likely that we have to do with nothing more than one of the prejudices of the dominant sex. During the days of its dominance, each sex invariably imagines that its members can do all things better than the members of the subordinate sex.

Burdach was merely reiterating an opinion of Socrates when he wrote: "The allotment of occupations is a natural one, and is in accordance with the peculiarities of the sexes, when man pursues his avocations away from the home whilst woman attends to home affairs." Such a view still prevails almost universally. It has seemed valid for centuries, and indeed for millenniums, thanks to the influence of the Men's State, which gave birth to the idea. We have shown that, despite its venerable antiquity and universal acceptance, the theory is untenable. The division of labour as between men and women is not the outcome of sexual differences, but has originated exclusively under

[16] Politik, vol. i, p. 256.

the pressure of monosexual dominance. The dominance is the decisive factor. But this shows us that the view prevalent to-day is erroneous—the view that the tendency to division of labour in general is a purely masculine tendency. Economists, historians, and sexologists have all made the same mistake to mention only Schmoller, Simmel, and von Wiese. We have seen that the tendency to the division of labour is no less persistent and no less universal among the most various peoples in the Women's State than it is in the Men's State. Monosexual dominance always prescribes one sort of occupations for the dominant sex and another sort of occupations for the subordinate sex. The tendency, therefore, is not specifically masculine; nor does it originate with women any more than with men; it is exclusively determined by the principle of monosexual dominance. This shows that the contention of Marx and Engels[17] to the effect that "the first division of labour was that between man and woman for the procreation of children," is erroneous. To men it seems almost self-evident that the sexes adopt a division of labour relevant to the reproductive faculties of women, and it is natural enough in the contemporary world to refer the division of labour between the sexes to the peculiarities of women's structure. When we contemplate women to-day we find them, on the average, physically weaker than men. A considerable proportion of women suffer from disturbances attendant on menstruation, and child-birth involves for many women a prolonged interruption to work. Nevertheless, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter, the women of the Women's

[17] Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staates. State have very different physical aptitudes from those possessed by the women of the contemporary Men's State. Where woman rules, she is no less superior to man in bodily capacity than man is superior to woman in this respect where man holds sway. It is home work, in especial, that impairs bodily fitness. Bachofen[18] recognised this influence, though only as regards the members of his own sex. He declared that a high position for women entailed an increasing physical degeneration for men. "Conditions obtaining to-day will enable us to understand such phenomena more easily. When the man sits at the loom, the powers of his body and his mind will inevitably become impaired." Yet even Bachofen fails to see that in the case of women continued occupation at the sewing machine or the cooking stove must impair the powers of body and mind.

Nevertheless Bachofen recognised that women tend to become more vigorous as their sex gains power. "It is well known that the physical strength of women grows proportionally with the decline in the physical strength of men. If to this there be superadded the ennobling influence which the consciousness of power and its exercise have upon them, whilst men are burdened by a sense of enslavement and are depressed by the performance of servile tasks, it is natural that the disparity between the two sexes should soon become more prominent. A physical degradation of the men and an increasing physical fitness of the women, are the necessary outcome of such conditions."[19]

[18] op. cit., p. I00.

[19] Very remarkable is the way in which Bachofen fails to recognise that the influence of masculine dominance is precisely the same, except that thereby it is the men who are made fit whilst the women are enfeebled.

Thus the women of the Women's State spontaneously acquire a physical fitness which enables them to satisfy the demands of the reversed division of labour. Monosexual dominance brings about a disparity in the physical aptitudes of the sexes. Charlotte Perkins Gilman[20] has rightly pointed out that there is no "weaker sex" among the lower animals. As will be shown in the eighth chapter, in proportion as women acquire equal rights, their physical fitness increases. The women of the ancient Teutons were no whit inferior to the men in respect of bodily size and strength. An experiment made by Gamba shows how quickly the bodily frame can be modified. He measured boys and girls at the outset of a gymnastic course and again six months later. The chest measurement, the stature, and the bodily strength all exhibited a notable increase.

We have, therefore, adequate grounds for the opinion that women's physique has had nothing to do, as cause, with the division of labour between the sexes. Here the comparative weakness of women is not a cause but an effect. Since in the Men's State to-day we see only the effects, we readily make the mistake of confusing effect with cause. In contradistinction to the general opinion, we regard it as incontestable that the first division of labour was that between a dominant sex and a subordinate sex. Herein is perhaps to be found the origin of all division of labour.[21]

The division of labour between the sexes originates

[20] Women and Economics, 1906.

[21] Schurtz considers that in the most primitive stages of human economic life the division of labour was such that men provided the foodstuffs of animal origin and women those of vegetable origin. The idea is untenable.

in this way, that the dominant sex tries to stabilise its power and to secure greater freedom for itself by providing food for the subordinate sex. Whether men rule or women, this division of labour has both advantages and disadvantages. To-day, when men rule, it is natural that we should fix our eyes upon the advantages that attach to the division of labour that is appropriate to masculine dominance. In such circumstances mankind declares that it is advantageous for men to be occupied away from home, and that woman's place is the home because woman is the childbearer.

But these advantages would not be recognised were women dominant. In that case it would be said that illegitimate children would be left uncared for if men were to do extra-domestic work and were to be the bread-winners and this neglect of illegitimate children is what we actually see to-day when man is the bread-winner. While the dominance of men remains undisputed, the drawback is ignored. Even to-day it is generally overlooked that the neglect of illegitimate children is a consequence of the occupation of men in extra-domestic concerns. The transition towards equal rights for the sexes tends, however, to make such drawbacks conspicuous.

Were women dominant, and should men attack the system, women would defend the division of labour in accordance with which they worked away from the home. The system, the women would say, is divinely ordained and in conformity with the laws of nature, for in the reversed system illegitimate children would be uncared for. Such a defence of feminine privileges would be quite as "logical" as the contemporary masculine defence of men's privileges on the ground that

woman's place is the home because woman is the childbearer.

These dominant women would likewise declare that prostitution would become a growing evil were men to work away from home—and we find that prostitution is actually rife to-day under masculine dominance. This great evil, which invariably attaches to the extra-domestic occupation of men, is overlooked during the period of masculine dominance. In a transitional phase of society, people become aware of its existence. In the Women's State, should men make an attack upon the privileged position of the women, these latter would stress the evils of prostitution even more strongly than men to-day stress the "purity of women" in order to prove that women must continue to be sheltered in the home. Women to-day, although to a considerable extent they are now invading men's spheres of occupation, are not installing brothels with male inmates; and such institutions are unlikely to become general, whatever happens, owing to the comparatively inadequate sexual capacity even of the most vigorous among men. Mutatis mutandis, however, in a Women's State wherein men's attack upon women's privileges had advanced as far as women's attack upon men's privileges has advanced in the contemporary Men's State, men would unquestionably proceed to establish brothels with women as inmates, although hitherto no such brothels had existed. To the women this would seem "an irrefutable proof that man's place is the home."