Abstract
‘In every society’, wrote Gunnar Myrdal, ‘there are at least two groups of people besides the Negroes, who are characterised by high social visibility expressed in physical appearance, dress, and patterns of behavior, and who have been “suppressed”. We refer to women and children.’1 Childhood, to which we shall refer in the conclusion, is, however, not a permanent condition. In respect of ‘suppression’, children escape from their political disqualifications soon after becoming aware of them. For us the more appropriate comparison is that between blacks and women, for both situations are unchangeable.
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Notes
G. Myrdal, An American Dilemma. The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York, Evanston and London, 1962), p. 1075.
M. Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Harmondsworth, 1975), p. 100.
B.E. Brown, Great American Political Thinkers (New York, 1983), 2 vols, Vol. 2, p. 108.
S.M. Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (London, 1980), p. 249.
M. Wollstonecraft, op. cit., p. 249.
E.C. du Bois, Feminism and Suffrage. The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America 1848–1869 (Ithaca and London, 1982), p. 23.
Brown, Great American Political Thinkers, Vol. 2, p. 108.
Du Bois, Feminism and Suffrage, p. 59.
Ibid., p. 73.
Aristotle, The Politics (Harmondsworth, 1962), pp. 49, 50 and Okin, Women in Western Political Thought, p. 91.
Du Bois, Feminism and Suffrage, p. 35.
A.S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement 1890–1920 (New York and London, 1981), p. 17. Also see Myrdal, An American Dilemma, p. 1074.
Genesis, 2:18 and 3:16. Also see I Corinthians 2:8–9; I Corinthians 14:34–5; I Timothy 2:11–14.
E. Sagara, A Social History of Germany (London, 1977), pp. 408, 410 and see p. 405.
J-J. Rousseau, Emile (London, 1964), pp. 322, 333, 340 and 349.
Okin, Women in Western Political Thought, p. 99 and see p. 102.
E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (New York and London, 1964), pp. 58, 60.
Quoted in Okin, Women in Western Political Thought, pp. 220–1. Also see J.B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca and London, 1958), pp. 177–83.
Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, p. 20.
Albert T. Bledsoe, quoted in Myrdal, An American Dilemma, p. 1074.
Sagara, Social History of Germany, p. 416.
W. Thonnessen, The Emancipation of Women. The Rise and Decline of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in German Social Democracy 1863–1933 (Glasgow, 1976), pp. 20, 22.
K.H. Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States (New York, 1971), p. 253. Also see R. Hofstadter (ed.), Ten Major Issues in American Politics (New York, 1968), pp. 92–5.
P.N. Carroll and D.W. Noble, The Free and the Unfree. A New History of the United States (Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 138.
J. Lewis (ed.), Before the Vote was Won: Arguments for and against Women’s Suffrage (London, 1987), pp. 430–3.
See B. Harrison, Separate Spheres. The Opposition to Women’s Suffrage in Britain (London, 1978), p. 34 and R.J. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany 1894–1933 (London and Beverley Hills, 1976), p. 23.
J. Lewis, Before the Vote was Won, pp. 73, 74 and see p. 431.
A. Kraditor, Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, p. 26.
M. Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Harmondsworth, 1975), p. 145.
Virginius Dabney, quoted in Myrdal, An American Dilemma, p. 1074.
J. Mackay and P. Thane, ‘The Englishwoman’ in R. Colls and P. Dodd (eds), Englishness. Politics and Culture 1880–1920 (London, 1986), p. 203.
Okin, Women in Western Political Thought, p. 252.
Lewis, Before the Vote was Won, p. 427.
J. Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York, 1938), pp. 58–9.
W. George, Darwin (Glasgow, 1982), p. 74.
G. Le Bon, The Crowd (London, 1952), pp. 35–6.
W.E.H. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty (London, New York and Bombay, 1896), 2 vols, Vol. 2, p. 458.
Lewis, Before the Vote was Won, pp. 76, 79–86.
Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, pp. 20–1. Also see pp. 19–20.
R.J. Evans, The Feminists. Women’s Emancipation Movements in Europe, America and Australasia 1840–1920 (London and Sydney, 1985), p. 125.
Sagara, Social History of Germany, pp. 415–16.
E. Valiance, Women in the House. A Study of Women Members of Parliament (London, 1979), p. 5.
F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 83.
J. Sayers, Biological Politics. Feminist and Anti-Feminist Perspectives (London and New York, 1982), p. 8. On Henry Maudsley see D. Pick, A European Disorder, c. 1848-c. 1918 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 203–16.
Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree, p. 305.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 147.
Harrison, Separate Spheres, p. 52. 48. M. Pugh, Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1867–1928 (London, 1980), p. 9.
Lewis, Before the Vote was Won, p. 61.
S.C. Hause with A.R. Kenney, Women’s Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton, NJ, 1984), p. 16.
Du Bois, Feminism and Suffrage, pp. 113, 115.
Thönnessen, Emancipation of Women, p. 98.
Lewis, Before the Vote was Won, pp. 413, 432.
T. Zeldin, France 1848–1945. Ambition and Love (Oxford, 1979), p. 350.
Harrison, Separate Spheres, p. 113.
Hause and Kenney, Women’s Suffrage and Social Politics, p. 253.
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© 1992 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Levin, M. (1992). ‘Exalted by their Inferiority’: On the Subjection of Women. In: The Spectre of Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12547-0_8
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