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about womankind quaintly outdated.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.
[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]. Extracted
from Martin Ward's Chesterton page.