WOMEN PROFESSIONS AND SKILLED LABOR. 459 



large the number of women fitted by inherited traits to occupy this 

 advanced field. But we have shown that the laws of sexual selection 

 and of population are entirely opposed to the increase of women thus 

 favored, and in favor of the average woman by a large per centum. 



I am inclined to regard all forces which have hitherto acted, and 

 yet continue to act, upon the great mass of humanity in the creation 

 of sentiments common to the majority upon a given subject, as acting 

 with the force of a law. I conceive, therefore, that there is yet another 

 law which explains, and tends to perpetuate, the present relation of 

 women to the other sex and to society. This is the law of public opin- 

 ion. The exponents of public opinion upon this subject are the women 

 themselves. I do not think any one will controvert me when I assert 

 that a vast majority of women are opposed to their own sex entering 

 the professions. One would naturally suppose that, in the matter of 

 religion, a woman's opinion is as good as a man's ; that, with equal 

 learning and experience, a woman is as competent to discharge pastoral 

 duties as a man (I am assuming the physical equality of the sexes) ; 

 and yet you may count upon the fingers of one hand the number of 

 pulpits filled successfully by women in this great country. In this 

 country women are free to enter the medical profession ; but, with 

 about as many exceptions as that of women filling pulpits, they are 

 gaining but a precarious and scanty support. Now, in both the pro- 

 fessions named, women are retarded by the force of opinion of their 

 own sex. In all social questions, women wield a great influence. In 

 these matters they are the throne, and the power behind the throne. 

 In Protestant congregations, if women were a unit in favor of women 

 preaching, women would preach in a fair proportion of church organi- 

 zations. If a woman made a free choice of a physician of her own sex, 

 there is scarce a household in which she would be denied her choice. 

 Women seem to lack confidence in their own sex in this position. In 

 the desperate diseases peculiar to women, the sorely afflicted ones seek 

 the medical man instead of the medical woman. The future has yet 

 to produce the anomaly of the female ovariotomist. In the literature 

 of medicine there has been but one Boivin, and but one La Chapelle. 

 The reliance upon man in moments of bodily peril is easily explained ; 

 it is an inherited trait, strengthened by education. 



I have said enough to explain philosophically the present relation 

 of women to the other sex, and to society. It is this relation which 

 has, in the past, regulated woman's admission into the professions and 

 skilled labor. But we have now to accept the fact that women have 

 entered the professions to contend with man in the struggle for exist- 

 ence. In this struggle, I presume, women expect no favors. In this 

 new field of contest all they ought to ask for is a fair chance to win 

 the same chances man must take. But, in view of her present relation, 

 and the radical physical differences between the sexes, have they a 

 fair chance, and can they take the chances of man and reach his level 



