molly

[originally posted on my blog, but I thought it might be of broader interest here …]

In one of her letters to the editor of the London Times, militant suffragist Emily Davison makes a critique and a plea that continue to resonate very much for me today (“Women’s Work,” 22 April 1911, 6G). When a student in one of my writing courses was researching Davison, she came across this piece; I was fascinated. The letter is interesting enough that I’ve transcribed it in full (with my musings after the text):

Sir–Will you allow me to add a contribution to the correspondence going on in your columns headed “Women’s Work”? The mistake which is being made by your correspondent who adopts the nom de plume of “A Woman” is that of arbitrarily labelling certain kinds of work as “women’s work,” and others as “men’s work.” She also throws a saddening sidelight on the poor opinion women anti-suffragists entertain of their own sex when she says the phrase “women’s work” confers a stigma of inferiority. The real meaning of the women’s movement of to-day is that such artificial delimitations are to be swept away. “Woman,” for example, asserts that “woman’s work means the nurture of the race, the domestic arts, and those other offices which naturally fall to women.” But most of us are acquainted with men who take up these so-called feminine pursuits and carry them out as well as, often better than, most ...