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Woman Not Inferior to Man

Sophia, 1739

Chapter V.

Whether the Women are fit for public Offices, or not,

IT is enough for the Men to find a thing establish'd to make them believe it well grounded. In all countries we are seen in subjection and absolute dependence on the Men, without being admitted to the advantages of sciences, or the opportunity of exerting our capacity in a public station. Hence the Men, according to their usual talent of arguing from seemings, conclude that we ought to be to. But supposing it to be true, that Women had ever been excluded from public offices, is it therefore necessarily true that they ought to be so? God has always been more or less resisted by ungrateful man, a fine conclusion it would be then to infer, that therefore he ought to be so.

But why do the Men persuade themselves that we are less fit for public employments than they are? Can they give any better reason than custom and prejudice form'd in them by external appearances, for want of a closer examination? If they did but give themselves the leisure to trace things back to their fountain-head, and judge of the sentiments and practices of Men in former ages, from what they discover in their own times, they wou'd not be so open as they are to errors and absurdities in all their opinions. And particularly with regard to Women, they would be able to see that, if we have been subjected to their authority, it has been by no other law than that of the stronger: And that we have not been excluded from a share in the power and privileges which lift their sex above ours, for want of natural capacity, or merit, but for want of an equal spirit of violence, shameless injustice, and lawless oppression, with theirs.

Nevertheless, so weak are their intellectuals, and so untuned are their organs to the voice of reason, that custom makes more absolute slaves of their senses than they can make of us. They are so accustom'd to see things as they now are, that they cannot represent to themselves how they can be otherwise. It wou'd be extremely odd they think to see a Woman at the head of an army giving battle, or at the helm of a nation giving laws, pleading causes in quality of counsel, administring justice in a court of judicature, preceded in the street with sword, mace, and other ensigns of authority; as magistrates, or teaching rhetoric, medicine, philosophy, and divinity, in quality of university professors.

If by oddity they understand something in it's nature opposite to the genuine, unbiass'd rules of good-sense; I believe the Men will find it a difficult task, to prove any oddity in such a fight, or any real inconsistence in it with rectified reason. For if Women are but consider'd as rational creatures, abstracted from the disadvantages imposed upon them by the unjust usurpation and tyranny of the Men, they will be found, to the full, as capable as the Men, of filling these offices.

I must own indeed in this age, to see a Woman, however well qualified, exert herself in any of these employments, cou'd not but as greatly surprize us as to see a man or woman drest in the garb in vogue at the time of Queen Bess. And yet our wonder in either case wou'd be the sole effect of novelty, or of the revival of an obsolete custom new to us. If from immemorable time, the Men, had been to little envious, and to very impartial, as to do justice to our talents, by admitting us to our right of sharing with them in public action ; they wou'd have been as accustom'd to see us filling public offices, as we are to see them disgrace them; and to see a lady at a bar, or on a bench, wou'd have been no more strange than it is now, to see a grave judge whimpering at his maid's knees, or, a lord embroidering his wife's petticoat: A Schurman1, with a thesis in her hand, displaying nature in it's most innocent useful lights, wou'd have been as familiar a fight, as a Physician in his chariot, conning Ovid's Art of Love: And an Amazon, with a helmet on her head, animating her embattled troops, wou'd have been no more a matter of surprize than a milliner behind a counter with a thimble on her finger, or than a peer of Great Britain playing with his garter. Not reason then, but error and ignorance cased in custom, makes these superficial creatures think it an unnatural sight.

There are few nations, beside our own, which think Women capable of holding the scepter, but England has learn'd by repeated experience, how much happier a kingdom is, when under the protection and rule of a Woman, than it can hope to be under the government of a Man. Matter of fact then plainly points out the absurdity of the contrary prejudice. How many ladies have there been, and still are, who deserve place among the learned, and who are more capable of teaching the sciences than those who now fill most of the university chairs? The age we live in has produced as many, as any heretofore, tho' their modesty prevents their making any public shew of it. And as our sex, when it applies to learning, may be said at least to keep pace with the Men, so are they more to be esteem'd for their learning than the latter: Since they are under a necessity of surmounting the softness they were educated in, of renouncing the pleasure and indolence to which cruel custom seem'd to condemn them , to overcome the external impediments in their way to study, and to conquer the disadvantageous notions, which the vulgar of both sexes entertain of learning in Women. And whether it be that these difficulties add any keenness to a female understanding, or that nature has given Women, a quicker, more penetrating genius, than to Men; it is self-evident, that many of our sex have far out-stript the Men. Why then are we not as fit to learn and teach the sciences, at least to our own sex, as they fancy themselves to be?

Footnote:

1 Anna Maria von Schurman (1607-1678)

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last updated February 2003