Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/218

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THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT

in architecture. The Architectural Association of London declines to admit women either as members or as students. Probably this is due to the fact that the profession is terribly overcrowded, and the young architects it trains have great difficulty in securing work on account of the already tremendous competition.

Although neither the Institute of Chartered Accountants nor the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors admits women, and thus precludes their getting the best-paid work, women are practising Accountancy, and it is generally agreed that this profession is particularly suitable for the clever, hard-working woman. The two great professions entirely closed to women at present are those of the Law and the Church. The feminist would open both these, admitting women to the Bar and the pulpit on the same terms and conditions as men.

The opposition to the woman lawyer is much the same as that which the woman doctor had to fight—prejudice and professional jealousy. The real argument is hidden in a cloud of words meant to convince the world of the natural disability of women, their sensitiveness, their delicacy, their utter lack of the logical faculty, all of which objections have been proved baseless by the thousand practising women lawyers of the