Career Women
Just a dozen years ago or so,
even Chesterton's followers considered his views about womankind quaintly
outdated. His detractors found his notions about "women's rights"
hopelessly repressive and bigoted. Many accepted the doctrine that women can
find fulfillment and happiness only in professional
careers. The role of wife, mother, and homemaker was mercilessly attacked and
belittled.
As usual, Chesterton's view was
not exactly what you might remember or expect. His main argument about careers
for women was that the feminist view is simply the masculine view applied to
women. Rather than follow a revolutionary course with truly feminine ideals,
the feminists of his day and ours simply demand to have what men have. If men
have careers, then women must have careers, for if men have economic
independence women must have the same.
It was quite clear to Chesterton
that having a job might make a woman independent of husbands and families, but
it also made them dependent on employers, dependent on wage-earning, and
servants to a business as most men already were. The feminists, he said, always
talk as if holding down a job
were a beatific benefit first
bestowed on men in a spirit of favouritism and then withheld from women in a
spirit of repression.
Today, the feminist view is
starting to fade. More and more women are discovering that real happiness and
"personal fulfillment" are not to be found
in the factory or office, and that few jobs offer beatitude but, rather,
boredom, drudgery and stress. Women are saying in ever greater numbers that
they want marriage and family, and that they want to devote full time to it.
Those who have to keep working wish it were otherwise. [J.P.]
[For further reading in
Chesterton's works see "The Prudery of the Feminists," Fancies Versus
Fads; "Feminism or the Mistake about Woman, What’s Wrong with the
World; "Woman," All Things Considered; "On
Women Who Vote," Avowals and Denials.]