What Feminism Means to Me – Feb. 17, 1914

The most important contributor to feminist literature up to date is, in my opinion, an unknown man in the Census Bureau. Isn't that the last place in the world you would expect to find one? There is a certain table of statistics in a volume of the 1900 Census entitle Women at Work, which can transform me at one glance from the serene and confident feminist I usually am into a positively exultant fanatical believer. It is a table which classifies all the women engaged in gainful occupations in the United States in the year 1900. I am sorry these figures are not up to date, but the corresponding volume for the 1910 Census is not yet out. Perhaps we can make a few honest and conservative deductions for the year 1914. Anyhow, the figures for 1900 are exciting enough.

To begin with, gainful occupations in general are classified under 303 headings, and in all but nine of these 303 occupations some women were found employed. The nine in which no women were engaged turn out to be: soldiers, sailors, marines, firemen, street-car drivers, telegraph and telephone linemen, helpers to brassworkersa, apprentices to roofers and slaters, helpers to steam boiler makers. That was 1900, remember, fourteen years ago. There may be still no women soldiers, sailors, or marines. (It isn't lack of initiative on women’s part that prevents that.) But I would be willing to guess there are by now a few women street-car drivers in the US, half a dozen linemen or so, and an appreciable number of “'apprentices to roofers and slaters,” to say nothing of “helpers to steam boiler makers.”

But let us stick to the census. It goes on to say that while there were no women found in these nine occupations, there were found five women steamboat pilots, 45 railroad engineers and firemen, 31 railroad brakemen, ten baggagemen, 26 switchmen, seven conductors, 185 blacksmiths, 508 machinists, 31 charcoal, coke and lime burners, eleven well borers, eight boiler-makers, six ship carpenters. These examples of women's initiative are selected by the census man as the most striking in his list. His own comment is profoundly interesting to me. "Such figures as these," he says, referring to those I have just given "have little sociological significance beyond indicating that there are few kinds of work from which the female sex is absolutely debarred, either by nature, law, or custom." Isn't that great? Don't you love him for it? I tell you that census man, whoever he is, is a feminist. I wish we could find him and put up a statue to him.

Now let us turn from these figures to some from the same list which undoubtedly do have sociological significance. There were in 1900 in addition to all those women coke-burners, well-borers and ship carpenters, 770,000 women farmers and agricultural laborers, 8,000 government officials, 7,000 physicians, 8,000 hotel keepers, 33,000 merchants, 17,000 packers and shippers, 142,000 saleswomen, 85,000 stenographers, 21,000 telegraph and telephone operators. Add to that, 1,000,000 women engaged at that time in mechanical and manufacturing pursuits, i.e. in factory work, and 2,000,000 in domestic or personal service, and we begin to be able to appreciate the fact that there were nearly 5,000,000 women of sixteen years and over engaged in gainful occupations in 1900.

But I must not pause here. There are two questions which must be on the tip of the tongue of every statistics-lover: (I) What proportion of the total number of women over sixteen was this 5,000,000 women in gainful occupations? (2) Is the number of women in gainful occupations growing relatively to the population? Let us dispose of the first question. The 5,000,000 women working in 1900 were twenty percent. of the total number of women over sixteen. Second, is this tendency on the part of women to work for a living on the increase, on the decrease, or stationary? To answer this question we must go back to 1890.From 1890 to 1900 the number of women working for a living increased 35 per cent., while the population increased only twenty percent. I think that establishes the fact that the tendency of women to enter gainful occupations is decidedly on the increase – the number of women earning their living grows at least three-fourths again as fast as the population grows. But let us examine that 35 per cent. increase a little. It is, from a feminist point of view, exceedingly significant that while the number of women engaged in domestic, and personal service increased only 26 per cent., women factory workers increased only 26 per cent., and women teachers only 33 per cent. (all of which have been for some time established occupations for women) – the number of women engaged in scientific and literary pursuits jumped 116 per cent., the number of women clergymen, journalists, architects and lawyers increased 221 per cent., stenographers and typewriters 305 per cent., saleswomen 156 per cent., packers and shippers 203 per cent., etc. In short, not only is the proportion of women in gainful occupations increasing, but that increase is taking place not so much in the old traditional occupations of teaching and domestic service, not so much in factory work where women's economic usefulness has long been established, but most emphatically in a great variety of commercial, agricultural and professional pursuits.

These facts, – that women are venturing into nearly every occupation there is, that their numbers are increasing by leaps and bounds, out of all proportion to the increase in population, that while 15 per cent of all women were at work in 1890, 20 per cent. were at work in 1900, and roughly 25 per cent. in 1910, – these facts are to me the most interesting, most hopeful, most stimulating facts in the world. They thrill me as no other statistics ever did.

In fact there is only one other way in which I can get a corresponding thrill. That, if you believe me, is by going to the circus. Doubting or troubled feminists should haunt the circus. There at last you can sit and observe your own sex with unqualified admiration. Watch the trapeze performers. There is no more beautiful sight in the world than those fearless creatures, men and women, with their lithe, perfectly trained bodies, swinging, balancing high in the air for our breathless delight. And, thank God, not one whit do the women fall short of the men in skill, endurance, suppleness or muscular co-ordination.

And the lady bare-back rider on the big white horse, is her performance any less brilliant than that of her gentleman partner on the black? No! and again, thank God.

And, as for the purely dare-devil feats of spectacular courage, aren't the performers a little more apt to be women? How many times have I sat and watched a women climb into a little red automobile on a platform way up at the top of the circus tent, wave a greeting to the audience below, and then start down the mad incline, take the death leap, turn two sommersaults and land three seconds later right side up and smiling!

And while the thousands clapped and thundered, I have sat still and gloried in her, and dreamed dreams of a future world in which women shall be free and strong of body, daring in spirit, lovers of games, excelling in feats of physical prowess.

To all weak-kneed sisters, to all who have listened to great doctors and scientists declaring the essential weakness of women, to all of us who have to confess that we cannot pick up a trunk and carry it upstairs as our brothers can, to all of us who admit to our own souls a sort of shrinking instinct to dodge behind a man when we hear a big dog jump out and bark in the night, – I recommend a seat at the circus. It's bound to cure your doubts, to re-establish your faith in the future. You come away regretful and determined, musing to yourself: –

"Yes, it's too late for me, I missed my chance; but my daughter can be as strong as her brother, – and my grand daughter, by all that I hold dear, she shall have the powerful, trained, active body of a young Diana. Why not? There's the circus to prove it."

I have brought in these facts from the humdrum working world, and these visions from the circus, because they suggest what feminism means to me. It means freedom for women, all kinds of freedom. But these two kinds, freedom in work and freedom in play, are the important ones to talk about, it seems to me. All the other kinds will follow in their train. Freedom in work, when once we have taken possession of it, will mean economic independence, without which the other kinds of freedom are hardly worth talking about. It will make freedom of choice in love and marriage possible for the first time. And nothing else will.

Freedom in play will mean free bodies, and a final escape from the very serious limitations put upon women's activities by their clothes.

Now a final word about this freedom of which we talk so eagerly; it was not easy to get and it is not easy to take, now that we almost have it. Most of the outside barriers are down, thanks to the pioneers. But the hardest part of the battle is yet to come; the battle with ourselves, with our inherited instincts, with our cultivated taste for leisure, with our wrong early training, with our present physical unfitness. In the end, though, we shall win this battle too. God meant the whole rich world of work and play and adventure for women as well as men. It is high time for us to enter into our heritage – that is my feminist faith.

Rubin, Dana. 2023. Speaking While Female: 75 Extraordinary Speeches by American Women. Herdon, VA: RealClear Publishing.