In dealing with the training for marriage, I pointed out that the qualities which make for success in the matrimonial market have little or no connection with the qualities required for the efficient performance of what is supposed to be the life-work of woman—the care of home, of husband and of children. I pointed out that the characteristics which are likely to obtain for a girl a desirable husband are not the same characteristics which will have to be brought into play if the husband, when he is obtained, is to find in her a desirable wife from the domestic point of view; and that, as a general rule, she is promoted to what should be the important and responsible position of wife and mother on the strength of attainments which have nothing to do with her fitness for the duties of that position.
The habit of judging a woman entirely by externals—appearance, dress, and manners—is not confined to the man who is in search of a wife. (“Judging” is, perhaps, the wrong phrase to use—it is, rather, a habit of resigning judgment so as to fall completely under the influence of externals.) It is very general amongst all classes of male employers, and its result is, it seems to me, a serious bar to efficiency in women’s work. It pays better in the marriage market to be attractive than to be efficient, and in a somewhat lesser degree the same rule holds good in certain other departments of women’s labour.
To a certain degree, of course, a man’s fitness for any particular work is judged by externals; but never to the same degree as a woman’s. Further, the judgment passed upon a man who is chosen to fill a vacancy because his prospective employer “likes the look of him” has some relation to the qualities which will be required of him in the execution of the duties he will be called upon to perform—it is not biased by irrelevant considerations of sex. A merchant will like the looks of a clerk who has the outward appearance of being smart, well mannered, well educated, and intelligent; an employer who wishes to engage a man for work which involves the carrying of heavy sacks will like the looks of a man who is possessed of muscular arms and a pair of broad shoulders. In each case he is favourably influenced by the man’s externals because they seem to him to indicate the qualities which he requires in his prospective employÉ.
The number of men who could engage a young woman to work under them on this purely commercial and unemotional basis is, I should say, comparatively limited. I do not mean, of course, that the element of sexual attraction enters consciously into the calculations of the ordinary male employer when engaging a woman, but it certainly enters unconsciously into the calculations of a good many. A man who says that he likes the looks of a girl whom he has engaged to fill the position of typist or cashier, does not usually mean at all the same thing that he means when he says that he likes the looks of his new porter or junior clerk: he does not mean that the girl strikes him as appearing particularly fitted for the duties of typist or cashier—more alert, more intelligent, or more experienced than her unsuccessful competitors for the post—but that she has the precise shape of nose, the exact shade of hair, or the particular variety of smile or manner that he admires and finds pleasing. That is to say, he is influenced in engaging her by considerations unconnected with her probable fitness for the duties of her post, since a straight nose, auburn hair, or an engaging smile have no necessary connection with proficiency in typewriting or accounts.
I am not insisting on this intrusion of the sexual element into the business relations of men and women in any fault-finding spirit; I call attention to it merely in order to show that the conditions under which women obtain their bread in the labour market are not precisely the same as the conditions under which men obtain theirs. The intrusion of the sexual element into commercial relations may be not only unavoidable, but defensible and desirable, on other than commercial grounds; but it must be admitted that it does not tend to encourage efficiency, and the necessary discouragement of efficiency should be taken into account in estimating the value of woman’s work in many departments of the labour market. I do not know whether the consciousness that they are liable to be promoted or degraded in business matters for reasons which have nothing to do with their business merits or demerits is humiliating or the reverse to the majority of women, but I do know that it is humiliating to some. (Not only to those who are deficient in good looks; I have frequently heard it resented by those whom the system favoured.) There is, too, a certain amount of irritating uncertainty about the working of the system, one man’s taste in feminine looks varying from that of his next-door neighbour.
As in marriage, so in other departments of the labour market, the result of this tendency to appraise a woman on the strength of externals alone has been the intellectual deterioration of the good-looking girl. I should be very sorry to have to maintain that the good-looking girl is necessarily born less intelligent than her plainer sister; but I do not think that it can be denied that it is made extremely easy for her to become so. The conspicuously attractive girl who enters a trade or business usually takes a very short time to find out that her advancement depends more on her conspicuous personal attractions than on the steady work and strict attendance to business which has to be rendered by the woman less bountifully endowed by nature. Hence she has every inducement to be less thorough in her work, less intelligent, less reliable, and less trustworthy. The deep-rooted masculine conviction that brains and repulsiveness invariably go together in woman has this much justification in fact—the unattractive girl has to rely on her work and intelligence for advancement and livelihood, and, therefore, is not exposed to the temptation to allow her brains to run to seed as unnecessary. There is plenty of proof that the temptation is often resisted by the woman born beautiful; but she is exposed to it all the same, and is not to be over blamed when she succumbs.
There is one other disadvantage under which women’s work in the paid labour market is apt to suffer—a disadvantage from which men’s work is exempt, and which is directly traceable to the idea that marriage is woman’s only trade. I alluded to it in an earlier chapter when I spoke of the common masculine attitude on the subject of feminine competition and the common masculine conviction that woman can somehow manage to exist without the means of supporting existence. One result of the assumption that every woman is provided with the necessaries of life by a husband, father, or other male relative is that the atmosphere which surrounds the working-woman is considerably more chilling than that which surrounds the working-man. His right to work is recognized; hers is not. He is more or less helped, stimulated, and encouraged to work; she is not. On the contrary, her entry into the paid labour market is often discouraged and resented. The difference is, perhaps, most clearly marked in those middle-class families where sons and daughters alike have no expectation of independence by inheritance, but where money, time, and energy are spent in the anxious endeavour to train and find suitable openings for the sons, and the daughters left to shift for themselves and find openings as they can. The young man begins his life in an atmosphere of encouragement and help; the young woman in one of discouragement, or, at best, of indifference. Her brother’s work is recognized as something essentially important; hers despised as something essentially unimportant—even although it brings her in her bread. Efforts are made to stimulate his energy, his desire to succeed; no such efforts are made to stimulate hers.... And it is something, in starting work, to feel that you are engaged on work that matters.
