WOMEN PROFESSIONS AND SKILLED LABOR. 455 



Deduct from this the comparatively small number of women of fashion 

 whose existence is merged into the decorative part of social life, and 

 we have here roughly grouped the lines which have defined the useful- 

 ness of women, and which have lain parallel for ages. In the midst 

 of this toiling mass of humanity phenomenal women have appeared 

 women who have thrown down the dividing lines of prejudice, and 

 created for themselves places among the most celebrated of the other 

 sex. Those who have thus elevated themselves above the mass have 

 demonstrated the capacity of women not only for the highest culture, 

 but also their ability to equal men in the use of faculties which are their 

 most distinguished attributes. 



For a generation or more the question of woman's entry into em- 

 ployments deemed man's exclusive province has attracted attention, 

 and raised up for woman a body of aggressive advocates of both sexes, 

 who, by their demands, have provoked some harsh criticism from those 

 who are in no sense the enemies of the intellectual and worldly ad- 

 vancement of women. Woman is now submitting her fitness to find 

 employment, in the learned professions and skilled labor, to the 

 rigid test of actual trial. Will she succeed, or will those of her sex, 

 who achieve success in these fields of labor, be the exception, rather 

 than the rule, in the future as in the past ? In order to answer this 

 question, it is my purpose to study woman in this relation, as a gynae- 

 cologist, 1 leaving out of consideration the social aspects of the case. 

 One, who has devoted years to the study of women and their diseases, 

 has a right to be heard upon this vital question. I do so the more 

 readily because I know of no gynaecologist who has devoted his special 

 learning to the study of woman's relation to man's work as a means 

 of subsistence and of usefulness. For our purpose, therefore, woman 

 must be scientifically investigated as a means to the accomplishment 

 of certain ends. She must be studied rather in her physical and mental 

 fitness, than in relation to society in her new position. This latter 

 part of the subject belongs to the sociologist. 



An examination of the present relation of woman to the other sex 

 will throw light upon the complex problem of her success, in the 

 future, in these fields of usefulness. The women of savage races, ex- 

 cept sexually, present but slight differences in physical development 

 and mental character from the males. That they are in base servitude 

 to the other sex is in obedience to the aggressive and belligerent char- 

 acter of all males of the higher order of animals. This has the force 

 of a law. The moral subjection of woman to the other sex is funda- 

 mentally a sexual peculiarity. With the slow advent of civilization 

 the differences between the sexes increased. With no lessening of 

 subjugation the capacity of woman for gross labor decreased, and 

 from man's equal, physically, she became only his equal mentally. 

 The chivalry of the' middle ages of Europe kept viable the principle 



1 Gynecology, that branch of pathology which treats of the diseases of women. 



