Charlotte Perkins Gilman
American writer and feminist theorist (1860 to 1935); author of Women and Economics.
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What they believe
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Humans are the only species in which the female depends on the male for food
We are the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food, the only animal species in which the sex-relation is also an economic relation.
gutenberg.orgSaid c. 1898This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These one: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 20 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
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Humans are the only species in which the female depends on the male for food
We are the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food, the only animal species in which the sex-relation is also an economic relation.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
Treating motherhood as a trade would be repugnant and socially harmful
It is revolting so to consider them; and, if we dare face our own thoughts, and force them to their logical conclusion, we shall see that nothing could be more repugnant to human feeling, or more socially and individually injurious, than to make motherhood a trade.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
Housewives are kept busy by house service, not by caring for children
It is not motherhood that keeps the housewife on her feet from dawn till dark; it is house service, not child service.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
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Human sex differences are so marked that they seriously injure the race
Sex-distinction in humanity is so marked as to retard and confuse race-distinction, to check individual distinction, seriously to injure the race.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
For a dependent woman, attracting a mate is also how she gets her living
For, in her position of economic dependence in the sex-relation, sex-distinction is with her not only a means of attracting a mate, as with all creatures, but a means of getting her livelihood, as is the case with no other creature under heaven.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
The sexuo-economic relation has checked human development in women and overdeveloped sex in both
This is the way in which the sexuo-economic relation has operated in our species, checking race-development in half of us, and stimulating sex-development in both.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
Marrying for money naturally follows from the economic dependence of women
The mercenary marriage is a perfectly natural consequence of the economic dependence of women.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
Half of humanity is denied free productive work and confined to sex-related channels
Half the human race is denied free productive expression, is forced to confine its productive human energies to the same channels as its reproductive sex-energies.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
Women barred from production create a market for luxury that checks true industry and art
Again, the consuming female, debarred from any free production, unable to estimate the labor involved in the making of what she so lightly destroys, and her consumption limited mainly to those things which minister to physical pleasure, creates a market for sensuous decoration and personal ornament, for all that is luxurious and enervating, and for a false and capricious variety in such supplies, which operates as a most deadly check to true industry and true art.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
The sexuo-economic relation was necessary to make the human male more feminine and so more human
The sexuo-economic relation was necessary to raise and broaden, to deepen and sweeten, to make more feminine, and so more human, the male of the human race.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
The main line of women's progress is toward economic equality, not only legal equality
The banner advanced proclaims “equality before the law,” woman’s share in political freedom; but the main line of progress is and has been toward economic equality and freedom.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
No social change in a single century has equalled the improvement of women in this one
No sociological change equal in importance to this clearly marked improvement of an entire sex has ever taken place in one century.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
Women's economic dependence causes unhealthy motherhood and a falling birth-rate
So far from the economic dependence of women working in the interests of motherhood, it is the steadily acting cause of a pathological maternity and a decreasing birth-rate.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
Women should be trained for motherhood rather than girls for catching a husband
Motherhood is the work of grown women, not of half-children; and, when we honestly care as much for motherhood as we pretend, we shall train the woman for her duty, not the girl for her guileless manœuvres to secure a husband.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
If babies would be better off partly in others' care, mothers have a duty to provide it
If it can be shown that our babies would be better off if part of their time was passed in other care than their mothers’, then such other care would be right; and it would be the duty of motherhood to provide it.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
While every woman cooks for her own family, cooking cannot rise above amateur work
Architecture might be more sportive and varied if every man built his own house, but it would not be the art and science that we have made it; and, while every woman prepares food for her own family, cooking can never rise beyond the level of the amateur’s work.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
A home that holds women at a primitive level holds back those who keep them there
A home in which the rightly dominant feminine force is held at a primitive plane of development, and denied free participation in the swift, wide, upward movement of the world, reacts upon those who hold it down by holding them down in turn.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
The private home and the dependent mother are no longer sufficient for training children
It is in the training of children for this stage of human life that the private home has ceased to be sufficient, or the isolated, primitive, dependent woman capable.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
Marriage is flawed when women enter it for food and clothes and men for cooks and housekeepers
It is a glaring proof of the insufficient and irritating character of our existing form of marriage that women must be forced to it by the need of food and clothes, and men by the need of cooks and housekeepers.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
Women's economic position, not their sex, is responsible for the ills blamed on them
What we need to see is that it is not woman as a sex who is responsible for this mis-mothered world, but the economic position of woman which makes her what she is.
Women and Economics (1898) Said c. 1898
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