Women's Rights is a name given originally by its promoters, but afterwards more frequently used by its opponents and detractors, to the movement, called by Mr George Meredith 'the most indigestible fact of our century,' of women towards personal and proprietary independence. The social, legal, and economic changes which these words imply have in no country at present been completely worked out, but the process has begun and is in a different stage towards its completion in every country of progressive civilisation. The largest strides towards the complete independence of women have been made in the United Kingdom, the Australian colonies, and the United States of America. It would not be possible in the space allotted to this article to trace the movement with any degree of completeness, even in these three countries, still less in the various countries of Europe which are largely affected by it. Attention will therefore here first be drawn to the
Copyright 1892 in U.S.
by J. B. Lippincott
Company. general causes which have given rise to the movement and account for the universality of its operation, and then to a brief outline of its recent development in Great Britain. It is to be particularly observed that the whole of modern society has been influenced by this movement; it is a living social force from Scandinavia to India, from San Francisco eastwards to the Ural Mountains, producing its reflex in all modern literature, laws, and institutions.
Sir Henry Maine points out in Ancient Law, and also in The Early History of Institutions, that this movement is really part of a far larger movement—i.e. the gradual emancipation of the individuals forming the family group from the absolute control of the head of the family. In patriarchal times every individual in the family group was completely subject to the patria potestas; sons, servants, children, wives could hold neither property, liberty, nor life except at the good-will and pleasure of the head of the family. The subordinate members of the family had no rights, no responsibilities, and no duty beside obedience. Little by little the absolute rule of the head of the family over the various members of the family group was encroached upon. The first step was a recognition of different kinds and degrees of power; at first the patriarchal power was identical in character over the whole of the persons and possessions of the family. The power over flocks and herds was not more absolute than that over sons, slaves, or wives; but gradually a difference was felt to exist, and different names were given to the different kinds of power exercised by the head of the family over the different members of it. Over material possessions and slaves it was called dominium; over children it was potestas; over free persons serving the family it was mancipium; over the wife it was and is manus. In the gradual development of modern society all the members of the family group, except the last, have completely emancipated themselves from the absolute control of the head of the family. The emancipation of women has proceeded more slowly than that of the other members of the family group; but the germ of it has been present from the dawn of history, and has been more or less widely recognised and developed in all progressive societies. Sir Henry Maine attributes in a very large degree the difference between the stagnant civilisation of the Hindu races and progressive civilisation of the Romans and the races influenced by Roman institutions to the fact that the latter have steadily and voluntarily relaxed the subjection of women, while the former have recoiled from these changes, and have used the combined authority of religion and law still further to complete the seclusion and degradation of the female sex.
The movement towards the emancipation of women is one from status to contract, from communism to individualism, from a condition in which the individual creates for herself few or no rights, few or no duties, to one in which she develops personal responsibility and independence. This view of the subject may suggest to the observer reasons which account for the universality of the women's rights movement wherever progressive societies exist, the different stages of its development in different countries being traceable to local causes. 'The movement of progressive societies has been uniform in one respect. Through all its course it has been distinguished by the gradual dissolution of family dependency, and the growth of individual obligation in its place. The individual is steadily substituted for the family as the unit of which civil laws take account' (Ancient Law, p. 168). The most casual observer is aware that very much has been done in this direc- tion so far as women are concerned in Great Britain during the 19th century. The husband no longer acquires by the mere fact of marriage control over the property of his wife (Married Women's Property Act, 1882); certain limited rights of guardianship over her children have been secured to her by law (Custody of Infants Act, 1886). Formerly all the children of a marriage were wholly under the control of their father, the mother possessing, even after the death of her husband, no authority except as his deputy. By the abolition of imprisonment (by an act passed in 1884) as the punishment for refusing an order of court for the restitution of conjugal rights, a wife's right to have control of her own person has been established. Minor alterations of the law, such as that which has recently improved the legal position of the wife in case of the intestacy of her husband, in the event of desertion by her husband, &c., are of tolerably frequent occurrence. The movement is perhaps not very rapid, but it is all in one direction; it is like a glacial drift, you cannot see it move, but when you look again, after a sufficient interval, you see that it has moved, and it always moves in the direction of increasing the personal and proprietary independence of women.
One main reason why this movement has been so much more marked during the 19th century than in any preceding time may probably be found in the economic changes accompanying the application of steam and labour-saving appliances to manufacturing. The immense development of manufacturing as contrasted with domestic industries has laid the foundation of economic independence for the great mass of working women. When a woman works as a member of a family group, the result of her work belongs not to herself, but to her family—that is to say, generally speaking, to her father or her husband. When a woman works in a factory her wages are her own property; she has passed from family dependency to self-dependency. The difference is not so much that working women work more than they did: the great mass of people must always work in order to live; but the result of their labour in the shape of wages forms a fund over which the worker now has the sole control, whereas in earlier times all she produced belonged to another, who in return certainly allotted her board and lodging, but believed himself to be doing so out of his own property, and not out of hers. Even now the domestic work of women is not often esteemed at its proper economic value. In an average working-class family the man is usually called the 'bread-winner.' He would say in perfect good faith that he 'kept his wife and family;' although the working-class mother, if she is an industrious woman with an average-sized family, leads a life of almost incessant toil for their benefit. The woman who cleans, sews, cooks, and washes for a man and six children 'keeps' the family quite as essentially as the man who turns a lathe or ploughs the land, and thereby brings in a weekly sum of money to the family purse. The value in money of women's work in a factory may probably before long cause a more general recognition of the value in money of women's domestic work. Its value in a sense that is beyond all money, if she does her duty to her children, fortunately stands in no need of emphasis.
The view that the recent rapid development of the Women's Rights movement rests on an economic basis receives confirmation from the fact that the greatest progress towards the independence of women has been made in those countries (Britain and its colonies, and the United States) that have been foremost in adopting modern economic changes in the application of steam and labour-saving machinery to industry. Countries that are most backward industrially are also most backward in raising the condition of women. Where the industrial development of a country offers the opportunity of economic independence to women social independence with all its various ramifications makes rapid progress; education, entrance into the professions, wider opportunities of work, of knowledge, of enjoyment, a share in public life and political liberty are demanded, and in Britain have been or are being secured.
The first fully conscious demand on the part of women in England for education, for employment, for political liberty, is to be found in Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792. Mr Lilly in his book On Shibboleths (1891) devotes a chapter to an attack on Women's Rights, in which he asserts that after the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's book, 'which made a certain stir,' but was 'soon forgotten,' the question of women's rights slumbered for seventy years, till it was revived by John Stuart Mill. The importance of Mr Mill's services to the women's movement cannot be exaggerated; but it is incorrect to assert that it had slumbered till he awoke it; during the 19th century the question has never slumbered; the foremost minds of the time have dealt with it and led it. From the somewhat erratic but brilliant and meteor-like championship of Shelley, the great literature of the century has never ceased to concern itself with the women's rights question. Aurora Leigh is an essay on women's rights which touched the relation of men and women at its very foundation with a master-hand and fearless decision. That it was recognised in this character by some at least of the opponents of women's rights is evident from Edward FitzGerald's outburst on the occasion of Mrs Browning's death: 'No more Aurora Leighs, thank God! A woman of real genius, I know; but what is the upshot of it all? She and her sex had better mind the kitchen.' Tennyson could not keep his pen from women's problems, and dealt with them to the disgust and astonishment of his friend FitzGerald in The Princess. The works of the Brontë sisters, especially Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, are full of the working of the ferment of women's rights. The same may be said of nearly all George Eliot's writings, of innumerable passages in Thackeray's, and continues to be true of the literature of our own times down to the Story of an African Farm, the works of Charles Reade, Mr George Meredith, Mr Thomas Hardy, and above all of the writings of Tolstoi, Ibsen, and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.
But the new force of the movement towards women's rights has made itself felt not only in what has been written by women and about women, but in what women have done, in the practical work they have accomplished. The women writers we have named and many others, including some who vehemently denounce the movement, are its products. We could not have had a Mrs Browning, nor a Mrs Somerville, a Harriet Martineau, nor the Brontës, Mrs Fry, Miss Octavia Hill, Miss Nightingale, Mary Carpenter, nor even a Mrs Lynn Linton and Mrs Humphry Ward, if the women of the 19th century had still been condemned to
A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage
Accounting that to leap from perch to perch
Was act and joy enough for any bird.
The opening of ordinary industrial employments which was brought about by large economic forces affecting the whole of society must be regarded not as a product of the women's rights movement, but as the principal material cause of its recent rapid development. Supplied with that motive power, the momentum acquired has been sufficient for many conquests. Many other employments and professions, notably that of medicine, have been opened to women; the lady journalist has made a position; other occupations in the hands of women from time immemorial (e.g. nursing and teaching) have been re-created and a wholly new spirit breathed into them. Education for girls and women not inferior in quality to that provided for boys and men has been successfully struggled for. Queen's College, opened in 1848 through the initiative of the Rev. F. D. Maurice and Dr (afterwards Archbishop) Trench, was the first attempt to provide university education for women in England. Bedford College, founded by Mrs Reid, was the next to follow. The national importance of girls' education was recognised by including girls' schools in the purview of the Schools Enquiry Commission appointed in 1864. The doors of the older universities were knocked at a few years later when Miss Emily Davies organised a petition to the university of Cambridge to open its local examinations to girls. This prayer was granted in 1865, and was the first recognition in England that the universities have duties in regard to women's education. The movement thus initiated resulted, mainly under the able guidance of Miss Davies, in the establishment of Girton College. About the same time the North of England Ladies' Council of Education—of which Miss A. J. Clough (1820-92) and Mrs Josephine Butler were leading members—began courses of lectures for women by university lecturers in a group of northern towns. Out of the demand that was thus found to exist for higher instruction for women sprang two important institutions: (1) the university extension movement, with its corollary in the University Colleges now existing in nearly all the most important centres of population throughout the kingdom, and (2) Girton College (q.v.) and Newnham College (q.v.), the one opened in 1869, the other in 1871. Conspicuous amongst the promoters of Girton was Madame Bodichon (1827-90), born Augusta Leigh Smith, the daughter of a Norwich M.P., and herself an accomplished water-colour landscape-painter. In 1881 the Cambridge senate passed a grace by an overwhelming majority (258 to 26) to open their honours examinations to women students of Newnham and Girton, without, however, conferring the degree upon them. Oxford followed Cambridge, though not upon identical lines. Durham opened its degrees in 1895. Cambridge rejected in 1897 the proposal to grant degrees to women. Permissive powers were in 1892 given to the Scottish universities to admit women to a degree in any faculty, and to make provision for the instruction within the university of women in any subject. In 1896 there were 188 women matriculated, 56 non-matriculated women students, and 68 attending extra-mural lectures in medicine. London University opened all its degrees to women in 1878, and since that date all other newly-founded universities (the Royal in Ireland, the Victoria in England, and the Welsh University) have admitted women to a position of perfect equality so far as degrees are concerned. Meanwhile secondary education for girls had been undergoing a revolution not less searching than that which has converted the ignorant and gin-drinking Mrs Gamp of former years into the trim, dextrous certificated nurse of to-day. What Florence Nightingale and her coadjutors did for nursing and nurses Mrs William Grey, Miss Shirreff, Miss Buss, Miss Beale, and others have done for the teachers and the taught in girls' schools. The result of improving the education of girls and women has been the overthrow of many cherished convictions, or rather prejudices formed without knowledge, on the limitations of the female intellect. Women have shown themselves capable of benefiting by the highest kind of instruction which a university can afford, and again and again in recent years the blue ribbon of the various triposes has been won by a girl student. The result has been a larger number of women engaged in scientific pursuits, in historical, archaeological, and classical research. Of the direct value of their work in increasing the sum of human knowledge experts alone have a right to form an opinion; but of the social advantages to the women themselves and to the society of which they form part there can be no doubt:
Get leave to work
In this world—'tis the best you get at all;
For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts
Than men in benediction. . . .
Get work, get work:
Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get.
A further social benefit has accompanied the opening of various avenues of work to women; it has increased the opportunities of comradeship and multiplied the bonds of friendship between men and women. The number of points at which their lives touch and run in unison has been increased. There are links of sympathy between them in the study as well as in the kitchen. It is almost as impossible to conceive of a modern man saying of any woman of genius 'she and her sex had better mind the kitchen' as it is to conceive of any modern man thinking of women as Pope, Lord Chesterfield, and Milton wrote of them.
A few words must be given to the successful struggle on the part of women to obtain medical education and an equal status with men in the medical profession. Dr Elizabeth Blackwell (q.v.) was the first woman upon the English medical register. She was placed upon the register in 1859 in virtue of a foreign degree (Geneva, U.S.A.). Later on foreign degrees ceased to give their owners a claim to be placed on the English medical register, and the second Englishwoman who desired to study and practise medicine had to enter by another door. Miss Elizabeth Garrett, now Mrs Garrett Anderson (q.v.), M.D., began her work of opening the medical profession to her own sex in 1860. After much effort and many repulses from various licensing bodies, she discovered that the Society of Apothecaries had no power under their charter to exclude her. She obtained their license and was placed on the register in 1865. This entrance for women into the profession was almost immediately afterwards closed. Three other women presented themselves in 1867 for the preliminary examination and passed successfully; the council of the Apothecaries Society was immediately called together, and a resolution was passed which had the effect of excluding women in future from the examinations of the society. Many years of unremitting effort followed: in Edinburgh an extraordinary degree of acrimony was manifested by the opponents of the women students. All means of getting upon the English register were closed, but women continued to get their medical education abroad, at Paris, Zurich, &c., and returned to practise in England. A women's dispensary and hospital was opened with a staff of women; then followed medical schools for women in London, and a little later in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast, and Cork. In 1876 an 'Enabling Bill' was passed by Mr Russell Gurney, which empowered all the licensing authorities in Great Britain and Ireland to open their examinations to women if they were so disposed. The first examining bodies to avail themselves of this power were the King's and Queen's College of Physicians, Ireland, and the Queen's University, Ireland. They were quickly followed (in 1878) by the London University, and no legal hindrance any longer obstructs the entrance of women into the profession. The change that has since that time taken place in the view of the majority of medical men with regard to women doctors is illustrated by the fact that in 1877 the British Medical Association at its annual meeting passed a resolution declaring in future all women to be ineligible as members, and in 1892 the same body, meeting at Nottingham, rescinded this resolution by the enormous majority of 600 to 4. In 1892 a movement was on foot to open the medical classes of the Cork Infirmary to women.
No account of women's rights would be complete which did not touch upon the great struggle against the worst of women's wrongs, the forcible subjection of women to the lowest animal instincts of men. In France and in other Latin countries women of a certain class are treated like cattle, and are absolutely at the disposal of the wretches who farm their destruction for their own pecuniary profit. White slavery is a term that but feebly indicates the horrors of the system. Mrs Browning throws light from the fire of her genius on this dark chapter of women's wrongs in the story of Marion Erle in Aurora Leigh.
I was not, as you say, 'seduced,'
But simply murdered.
There are men in every country who use their command of wealth, of physical strength, of mental subtlety to subdue a woman to their vicious instincts, and then despise her for being what they have made her; they excrete her for not having what they have robbed her of. The legal position of women of this class has never been so terrible in England as in France and other continental countries; but an attempt was made in 1866 and in 1868 by the passing of what were known as the Contagious Diseases Acts, to introduce part at least of the continental system into the English garrison towns. The acts were passed and were in operation for twenty years, but throughout these twenty years an unceasing and most active agitation was kept up for their repeal, led with persistent courage by Mrs Josephine Butler. The acts were repealed under the parliamentary leadership of the Right Hon. James Stansfeld in 1886; they have since that time been condemned by the medical profession (Hygienic Congress, 1891) as completely useless from the hygienic point of view; but this was not the motive power which brought about their repeal. This was supplied by the steadfast resistance of the women of England, led by Mrs Butler, to the doctrine that vice was necessary, and being necessary the state was bound to provide, at the expense of the personal liberty of the women sacrificed to it, that it should be as little dangerous as possible. Directly growing out of this movement other reforms have been forced upon an unwilling legislature with the object of giving greater protection to women and girls from the vicious and mercenary instincts of depraved men and women. The age of consent has been raised from thirteen to sixteen; and many offences against women, not formerly recognised as such by law, have been made criminal. Much has been done in this field towards the reparation of the wrongs of centuries, but much still remains to do.
With regard to the claim of women to take part in public life, to share in political work and responsibility, many changes in the direction of conceding what the Women's Rights party demand have been made, but the battle still rages loud and long over the claim to the parliamentary franchise. The women of Great Britain now exercise the municipal, school board, board of guardians, county council, and parish council suffrages; and they sit in parish councils, on school boards, and on boards of guardians, where their influence has been in the highest degree beneficial, especially in the care of the aged and infirm in the workhouse infirmaries, and in the education and nurture of pauper children. If there are any children in the world that have a mother-want, it is the children in workhouses. This want the lady guardian, where she exists, has done much to supply. Women's suffrage formed part of the Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1893, passed by Conservative and Liberal governments respectively; in the second of these, amendments were inserted enabling married women, if otherwise qualified, to vote in parish council elections, and also rendering women eligible for seats in parish councils. There has been little opposition to the extension to women of powers of this kind. Considerable opposition is, however, still provoked by the proposal to confer the parliamentary franchise on duly qualified women. But in proportion to the effort that is made in the House of Commons against women's suffrage the parliamentary majority against it is remarkably small. In the session of 1892 a whip against a very moderate women's suffrage bill introduced by Sir Albert Rollit, Conservative member for Islington, was signed by twenty leading members of parliament representative of every section of the House, including Mr Chamberlain, Mr Labouchere, Sir William Harcourt, and Lord Randolph Churchill. The attack on women's suffrage was further supported by a pamphlet from the pen of Mr Gladstone. Notwithstanding this remarkable combination of hostile forces, the majority against the second reading (23) only very slightly exceeded the number of members who had signed the hostile whip, the numbers being, with tellers and pairs, 179 to 202. The reason of this small majority against women's suffrage is probably to be found in the activity of women in political work. The intense interest awakened on both sides on the subject of Home Rule for Ireland led to the formation in each political party of women's political associations. The Conservative party was first in the field of social change, the Primrose League being formed in 1883, some years before the other political party had encouraged any political organisation among women. Women are now found to be extremely efficient as canvassers, in looking up out-voters, and also in addressing political meetings. The difficulty of maintaining that women are fit to do political work, are in fact fit to advise voters how to vote, but are not fit to vote themselves, amounts in many minds to an impossibility. This is especially felt by members of parliament from the fact that the great majority of women who are able and willing to do political work are strongly in favour of the political emancipation of their own sex. Just before the division on women's suffrage in 1892, 168 branches of the Women's Liberal Federation petitioned their members in favour of the bill. In the immediate prospect of a general election these petitions carried more than ordinary weight. Women's suffrage is now in the peculiar position of receiving support mainly from two sources—the leaders of the Conservative party, and the rank and file of the Liberal party. The Marquis of Salisbury and the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour support it, and the National Congress of Conservative Associations meeting at Birmingham in November 1891 passed a resolution in its favour by an overwhelming majority. The leaders of the Liberal party, however, as a whole, give it no support; they are aware from former experience that the Liberal feeling in the country favours it; they will not therefore suffer the subject to be discussed at their party conferences in the provinces. The belief no doubt exists that an extension of the parliamentary suffrage to women householders would tend to strengthen the Conservative party, and this accounts for the anomalous features of the political position of the question. It is based on Liberal principles, but would be advantageous to the Conservative party. This is, however, the mere accident of the moment, and the whole situation as regards the political prospects of the question may probably enter a new phase before many years have passed.
In the Isle of Man women have voted in the election of members of the House of Keys since 1880. In New Zealand, after a short but keen struggle, women's suffrage was finally carried in September 1893; and in the following November women voted for the first time in a parliamentary election. The women availed themselves of the new privilege in large numbers; they were everywhere treated with respect and consideration. The women's vote did not produce a change of government. At the general election of 1893 there were 193,536 men and 109,461 women electors on the rolls. In South Australia the suffrage was given to women by an act of 1894. Women are now also on an equality with men in Iceland, Jersey, and Pitcairn Island. Experience is favourable to women's suffrage; the general feeling where it has been tried is overwhelmingly in its favour; it has produced none of the disasters that its opponents confidently predicted of it. This favourable experience cannot be without its weight; it is not, however, probable that the House of Commons will be very materially influenced by the experience of localities the circumstances of which are so widely different from those of the United Kingdom. If Englishwomen are to gain political emancipation, it will be by their own political work and by convincing the majority of their countrymen that they can be included in the rights and duties of political citizenship without risk and with advantage to the interests of the nation as a whole. Those only appreciate the whole significance of the present effort for the political emancipation of women who recognise in it a phase of that larger women's rights movement which is the subject of this article.
In the United States the movement began in connection with the anti-slavery agitation in 1848; and from 1852 till the civil war annual meetings were held. The suffrage has been granted to women in Wyoming (1869), Colorado, Idaho, and Utah. In some states they have the municipal suffrage; in about half of the states the right of women, married and unmarried, to direct representation in public school questions is recognised. In all the states the profession of medicine is open to women; in almost all the states where the question has been raised women are empowered to enter the legal profession. By special act of congress they may even be commissioned attorneys-at-law of the Supreme Court; and by the federal government they may, as citizens, be commissioned as 'post-mistresses, United States marshals, captains of steamboats, surgeons in the army, nurses and matrons in government hospitals, clerks in the several departments of government.' Many colleges and universities admit women to full medical and legal courses. The oldest universities and colleges do not admit women to a full course of instruction in all departments; but most of those founded since 1840 receive men and women on equal terms. The first women graduates were three, in 1841, from Oberlin. There are few colleges for women alone; the most famous of them are Vassar (q.v.) and Smith College at Northampton, Massachusetts. Bryn Mawr College, 10 miles from Philadelphia, follows the 'group system' of studies as organised in the Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1880 in this village, originally settled by Welshmen, and was opened in 1885.
See Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law and Early History of Institutions; Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792); John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women (1861; new ed. 1883); The Woman Question in Europe (ed. T. Stanton, New York, 1884); and works by the Misses Bulley and Whitley (1895), Cleveland (1896), Georgina Hill (1896), Lina Eckenstein (1896); Countess of Warwick (1898), and Helen Zimmermann (1899). See, too, the articles on Hypatia, Joan of Arc, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mrs Somerville, Mrs Jameson, and other eminent women separately discussed in this work; also the articles on HUSBAND AND WIFE, MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, WIDOW, FACTORY ACTS, &c.