TABOO AND GENETICS 191 



standardization of women. The sheer weight 

 of the number of unattached women in present 

 day Hfe has made such a move a necessity. In 

 England, at the outbreak of the war, there were 

 1,200,000 more women than men. It is 

 estimated that at the end of the war at least 

 25% of English women are doomed to celibacy 

 and childlessness. In Germany, the industrial 

 census of 1907 showed that only 9 J millions of 

 women were married, or about one-half the 

 total number over eighteen years of age. In 

 the United States, married women constitute 

 less than 60% of the women fifteen years of 

 age and over. 



The impossibility of a social system based 

 on the old sex taboos under the new conditions 

 is obvious. There must be a revaluation of 

 woman on the basis of her mental and 

 economic capacity instead of on the manner in 

 which she fits into a system of institutional 

 taboos. But the old concepts are still with us, 

 and have shaped the early lives of working 

 women as well as the lives of those who have 

 fitted into the old grooves. Tenacious survivals 

 surround them both, and are responsible for 

 many of the difficulties of mental and moral 

 adjustment which make the woman question a 

 puzzle to both conservative and radical thinkers 

 on the subject. 



