Woman's Work
Despite woman's persistent effort to become man's equal, man himself still
tries to keep her his superior.
Speaking to the graduating class at Radcliffe college, Dr. Alan Chester Valentine,
master of Pierson college, Yale university, warned the young women against becoming
Amazons and urged them to spiritualize the world which men have so largely mechanized,
saying:
"Education....for women should not be to instruct them in doing men's
work, but to fit them for creating a new and better world than the world of
men.
"In their struggle to escape the domination of men, women have neglected
their spiritual powers to become Amazons by using men's weapons. Here in America
the influence of women as an ideal has declined, but to women have been given
spiritual powers which our leaders of today are not using to advantage.
"Men's demands are too simple and narrow, while to women have been given
clarity of vision, respect for intuition, a sense of the practical and the duty
of educating the young. Spiritual powers must be developed, within the individual,
which can turn the mechanical economies of man's world into a more human civilization."
Woman's work, it has been said, is never done. How many self-made men ever realize
that they are not self-made at all, but simply the clay that some woman took
and shaped? Dr. Valentine, however, was honest enough to admit before the young
Radcliffe women that when they and their sisters shall have breathed a spirit
into this material world and made it a better place to live in, men will come
forward and "take the credit for it." And who will deny that they will
deserve at least a 50-50 share? |