Women in Public Life Author:Jane Addams Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF FEMINISM By Maurice Pabmelee, New York City. The term "feminism" has been used in a variety of ways. But generally speaking it... more » seems to be used as a name for the present extensive movement for removing discriminations against woman on the basis of her sex and for placing her entirely or as far as possible on an equality with man. The economic basis of feminism is obviously one of the most if not the most important aspect of feminism, because its economic basis is more or less fundamental to every other aspect of feminism. This subject involves a great many problems which can be solved only in the course of time, some of them probably not for a long time to come, and in the present transitional stage it is impossible to give a final answer to most of them. I shall attempt, therefore, to state only the more important of these problems, indicating only tentatively a possible solution for some of them. The more extreme type of feminist seems to assume that woman can, will and should be on an absolute equality with man in every respect. The tendency of this type of feminism is to minimize almost to the point of nullity the differences between man and woman and between the human and social functions of the two sexes. Economically, then, this would mean that woman can, will and should enter every occupation along with man and that she should become economically as independent as man is or is supposed to be. But it is not safe to assume this without careful study of the subject, and such study may indicate that the two sexes cannot be as nearly equal, or, to use a more correct term (for the term equal is question-begging), as nearly alike as this type of feminist seems to assume. Contrasted with the extreme type of feminist is the extreme type o...« less