This remark is perhaps truer as
regards the stage of economic development than as regards
development in any other respect. At the same time the position
assigned to the woman in the accepted scheme of life, in any
community or under any culture, is in a very great degree an
expression of traditions which have been shaped by the
circumstances of an earlier phase of development, and which have
been but partially adapted to the existing economic
circumstances, or to the existing exigencies of temperament and
habits of mind by which the women living under this modern
economic situation are actuated.
The fact has already been remarked upon incidentally in the
course of the discussion of the growth of economic institutions
generally, and in particular in speaking of vicarious leisure and
of dress, that the position of women in the modern economic
scheme is more widely and more consistently at variance with the
promptings of the instinct of workmanship than is the position of
the men of the same classes. It is also apparently true that the
woman's temperament includes a larger share of this instinct that
approves peace and disapproves futility. It is therefore not a
fortuitous circumstance that the women of modern industrial
communities show a livelier sense of the discrepancy between the
accepted scheme of life and the exigencies of the economic
situation.
Pages:
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450