Page:Woman and her possibilities.djvu/20

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WOMAN AND

ment, but shows this pre-eminence to be a distinction of humanity and not of sex, fully open to women if they use their human powers."

All she says is well worth reading carefully, since the scientific and historical information is given with an unusual degree of carefulness and accuracy. Her statements regarding the degradation of women in various races and at various times are mild compared with, say, the writings of the fathers of the church or the bare records of the proceedings of some church councils.

Among savage peoples and among primitive people subsisting by hunting, the men are the slayers, the women do everything else. In industries men were at first women's comrades, afterwards their competitors. Nowadays, in civilized countries women wish to compete on equal terms with men in everything pertaining to work, wage-earning and social status. What resemblances and differences have to be taken into account when estimating the claims of women to compete with men in these fields?

Men and women both belong to the human species; and both are born of women. Perhaps these are the only respects in which all men and all women resemble each other. Apart from the differences existing in the bodily organs that are specially concerned in the continuation of the race, what other differences are there between men and women? An enumeration of the many and various bodily and mental characters in which differences have been noted and scientifically studied would prove highly interesting and probably extremely instructive, as well as somewhat surprising. But we can only glance at this subject.

Anatomical differences are seen in the general bodily form and proportions, in the head, brain,