What is the excuse put forward to deny women their rightful place in the working world? The fact that they are the child-bearers. It is this aspect of the problem that I intend to consider, from two angles. First, women's rights in regard to their functions as child-bearers; second, how it affects them in their larger lives.
Pre-industrial revolution, when the home was the centre of work, men, women and children worked in the house and the fields together and there was little conflict between woman's "two roles". With the coming of the factories a constant life of child-bearing up to, or nearly until, her death isolated woman in her home, and financial considerations forced children out to work at an appallingly early age.
But, particularly in the last few years, a great revolution has taken place. When the full history of women's emancipation is written, surely Marie Stopes will be placed above the Pankhursts, the birth pill before the vote, in importance. After all, there is no point in discussing the work of women in industry if only spinsters are free to work. Increasingly, women have control over their own bodies, and any organisation fighting for women must make as one of its central planks the establishment of full control. This should include: free contraceptives on demand, free abortion on demand (even the pill is only 99% effective) and a change in social attitudes so that women who do not want children do not feel constrained to have them. As well as this, women must demand the right to free pregnancy testing and more research into congenital abnormalities - their detection and prevention.
Only then will every child born be wanted. For both men and women, the birth of a wanted baby is still one of the greatest joys life has to offer, whilst an unwanted child is a misery to both itself and its parents, and often turns into a social outcast. Having had the child, the mother must be given equal rights over it with the father, or, in the case of an unmarried mother, total rights.
More and more, the small family is becoming the normal thing, with most having two or three children. If women stay at home for the first two or three years of the child's life and have children at two or three year intervals, then the average stay away from work will be between six and nine years. We are told that, in an increasingly technological age, many men will have to be [illegible] suggests this as a reason for not educating men properly in the first place. At the moment about [illegible] million mothers work, of these approximately [illegible] have children under five, [illegible] employment prospects are all based upon an ever decreasing influence in their lives. At the same time, increased leisure and changing attitudes mean that fathers are taking more part in bringing up their children. The question of his children's schooling may influence a man's decision on where to work as much as pay, yet who suggests that his prospects should be curtailed as a result? A woman may spend 35 years working and ten years bearing and rearing babies full-time, but these ten years over-shadow her entire life.
Yet, just because more children are, and will be, born wanted, mothers take more interest in them and are willing to learn more about their needs. I should like to see both boys and girls taught much more about the processes of birth and child cares and development. The importance of the first few years of life is becoming more understood, but, like all "woman's work", the care of babies is belittled. In some societies mothers willingly pass on the early care of their young to people they despise, as in South Africa. If it was approached in the same spirit as other jobs women would get much more satisfaction out of bringing up their children.
The independence of women and the "upgrading" of their jobs as mothers would be achieved by paying a wage to women during the ten years they work at home. It is important that women are not financially dependent on men during this time.
Of course, the mental health of the mother is of great importance, as is the need for her to prepare for her return to work. A whole article could be written about the ways in which the drudgery of housework could be cut down by community action, leaving more time for community provided activities for mother and baby. Only a socialist society could do this properly, of course, because at the moment such services are provided by private enterprise for profit.
The question of educating girls to be something other than just "wives and mothers", not to mention consumers, is worthy of yet another article. Indeed, the whole "woman question" covers a very wide field.