Chapter II: The Drawback of Health

One sometimes wonders whether, if more time had been given in schools to the study of physiology, women would have been tempted to enter upon physically exhausting careers.

When we examine the complicated but delicately-made workmanship of the female body, compared with the simple robustness of the male, we must seriously consider whether Nature intended women for their present work.

People have argued and will always argue that we have women who are stronger than men. This we do not deny; but the whole conformation of a woman’s body goes to prove that she is not fitted for heavy physical work, whatever her mental capacity may be.

Thus it is that all the controversy about the abolition of a Woman’s Police Force, (which never existed), makes one wonder why a body of _Welfare Workers_, as they really are, should want to be called _Police_, when they are unable to protect themselves, far less to arrest a man. Think what a blow in a woman’s chest may mean! Or a kick! Or a chill at the wrong time!

But here again, we have the advanced feminists attempting to spoil a very valuable “welfare” cause, by forcing women down a road which they are not fitted by Nature to tread. More than this, they can only succeed as “welfare” workers, when the police become interested in their work and will protect them, if necessary, whereas now they annoy the whole force by taking the title and uniform of a profession they cannot safely adopt.

This is how a policeman summed them up. “God forbid that I should ever want to prevent a woman from earning her living; but it gives a fellow a kind of degraded feeling to be asked to take any woman into the immorality of Hyde Park at night.” So ought every policeman to feel, and the whole _raison d’être_ of his profession goes, when he has to share it with women.

When the Great War came, woman had the unique experience of trying her hand at all work, from the land to the railway station and the omnibus, and from the counting-house to the Civil Service. She could then judge men’s work first-hand. There were no men for the hard fetching and carrying, so that she had to do it herself. The general opinion has been that she proved a remarkably good stop-gap; _but only a stop-gap_. The most intelligent women workers have recognised and owned this.

During the War, too, there was always the patriotic ideal to help one along. Could so many have toiled day and night had they not ever ringing in their ears the eternal refrain, “I am helping to win the War, I am doing my bit.” It is not just to criticise, then, women who worked with a zeal and self-abnegation for which some of them will have to pay, physically and morally, till the end of their lives. At the same time, when women ask to be judged for their war-work according to men’s standards, they are playing the game of the little frog in the fable who tried to measure himself against the ox, and they will suffer as he did.

And who amongst us has forgotten the physical strain for even the strongest women? During the war, the bus women used up their strength and their nerves. They were so over-wrought that a cross word would produce a torrent of wrath, and one spoke to them as seldom as possible. Yet the work is no more strain on a man than eating his breakfast.

How can any one pretend that such war-work suited the women? I remember a woman porter who took charge of a suit case for me that few men would have found heavy, but which I myself could not carry. The pale-faced porteress soon became too exhausted for such a load. So I gave her a large tip and kind words in exchange for her insults; and under the influence of this unexpected kindness, she burst into tears. Were not most of our workers in a similar state of nervous prostration? Then there seemed no option; but looking at the havoc that was thus wrought upon women’s health, one wonders whether it would not have been better to have imported coolies or blacks.

And where is the contractor who will pay for woman’s work at the same figure as man’s? In the labour market women must always be a poor speculation from the physical point of view, and so, when equal work means equal pay, the man, for whom there is less physical risk, secures the job. Woman must undercut man, which is economic suicide.

In office life too the routine work proves a great strain. Women start off so full of zeal. They overwork, as they love and hate and take exercise, _always to excess_. And the flame of youth quickly burns itself out. German doctors have always advocated that to assure safety in middle age every woman, whether she thinks she requires it or not, ought to have two complete days’ rest a month. But how many can afford this? and what would their employers have to say?

And who does not know how easily a woman’s health is wrecked by poor or insufficient food? Argue and warn as one may, no woman who has to choose between clothes and food would choose food. She cannot, clothes being a business asset. In short, since we are summing up the disadvantages of women’s work, it must be admitted that the question of health is her chief handicap—a handicap which often puts her altogether out of the race.

In the days of primitive men and women, they divided their work, as it were, by instinct. He hunted the wild beasts; she cooked them and looked after the little savages in the tent. Neither attempted the other’s task, and yet to-day, with all her physical disqualifications, woman is often forced to do the work of both.

Indeed, the whole situation seems to have been reversed. Very few women are really qualified to succeed in men’s professions, yet often they persist in trying until they break down, whereas it is doubtful if there is one part of a woman’s work that men cannot do as well, if not better than women—though they seldom care to try! That is to say, though men may not be good, all-round house-keepers, they are better at special jobs. As a tailor, a servant, a chef, a masseur, a hairdresser, a dressmaker and sometimes even in the care of babies, they are better specialists than a woman. In the United States, Chinamen are found to make excellent nurse-maids.

When I was crossing the Atlantic during one of the worst storms of the year, a British officer took charge of his baby in a fashion that won universal admiration. Every woman on board, including his wife, was ill; so the father powdered and bathed, combed and fed the little thing; yet, when questioned, he owned he had never done anything of the kind before, or even watched the operation.

How many outstanding women painters, musical composers or doctors, can we name? In the theatre, where she can keep her sex and give full sway to her emotions, woman reigns supreme; though even here sometimes, at the expense of health.

Entirely without disloyalty, one must emphatically declare (for the statistics of the war are on record to prove it) that, for physical reasons alone, we cannot rely on women to replace men in professions, in the business world, nor as land-workers. They can, very successfully, supplement men and, temporarily, replace them, but their physical strength quickly gives way and their reign must of necessity be short.

Then why not give our first consideration to health? Why attempt work for which we are not physically fit?

In the administration of prisons, hospitals, and work-houses, as poor-law guardians and, above all, in the home, women can render invaluable service. It seems a thousand pities for them to neglect these spheres for others where they are too often foredoomed to failure.