The Modern Woman's Rights Movement Part 15

Woman's freedom to choose her husband.

The training of women in independent thought and action.

A thorough education for woman.

In 1910 a congress of Mohammedan women will be held in Cairo.

I may add that the Koran, the Mohammedan code of laws, gives a married woman the full status of a legal person before the law, and full civil ability. It recognizes separation of property as legal, and grants the wife the right to control and to dispose of her property. Hence the Koran is more liberal than the Code Napoleon or the German Civil Code. Whether the restrictions of the harem make the exercise of these rights impossible in practice, I am unable to say.

European schools, as well as the newly founded _Universites populaires_, are in Turkey and in Egypt the centers of enlightenment among the Mohammedans. The European women doctors in Constantinople, Alexandria, and Cairo are all disseminators of modern culture. A woman lawyer practices in the Cairo court, and has been admitted to the lawyers' society.

The Young Turk movement and the reform of Turkey on a const.i.tutional basis found hearty support among the women. They expressed themselves orally and in writing in favor of the liberal ideas; they spoke in public and held public meetings; they attempted to appear in public without veils, and to attend the theater in order to see a patriotic play; they sent a delegation to the Young Turk committee requesting the right to occupy the spectators' gallery in Parliament; and, finally, they organized the Women's Progress Society, which comprises women of all nationalities but concerns itself only with philanthropy and education. As a consequence, the government is said to have resolved to erect a humanistic _Gymnasium_ for girls in Constantinople. The leader of the Young Turks, the present President of the Chamber of Deputies, is, as a result of his long stay in Paris, naturally convinced of the superiority of harem life and legal polygamy (when compared with occidental practices).[112] The freedom of action of the Mohammedan women, especially in the provinces, might be much hampered by traditional obstacles. Nevertheless, the restrictions placed on the Mohammedan woman have been abolished, as is proved by the following:--

In Constantinople there has been founded a "Young Turkish Woman's League"

that proposes to bring about the same great revolutionary changes in the intellectual life of woman that have already been introduced into the political life of man. Knowledge and its benefits must in the future be made accessible to the Turkish women. This is to be done openly. Formerly all strivings of the Turkish women were carried on in secret. The women revolutionists were anxiously guarded; as far as possible, information concerning their movements was secured before they left their homes. The Turkish women wish to prove that they, as well as the women of other countries, have human rights. When the const.i.tution of the "Young Turkish Woman's League" was being drawn up, Enver Bey was present. He was thoroughly in favor of the demands of the new woman's rights movement. The "Young Turkish Woman's League" is under the protection of Princess Refia Sultana, daughter of the Sultan. Princess Refia, a young woman of twenty-one years of age, has striven since her eighteenth year to acquire a knowledge of the sciences. She speaks several languages. The enthusiasm of the Young Turkish women is great. Many of them appear on the streets without veils,--a thing that no prominent Turkish woman could do formerly.

Women of all cla.s.ses have joined the League. The committee daily receives requests for admission to membership.

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Total population: 1,591,036.

The men preponderate numerically.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, being Mohammedan countries, have harems and the restricted views of harem life. Naturally, a woman's rights movement is not to be thought of. Polygamy and patriarchal life are characteristic.

Into this Mohammedan country the Austrian government has sent women disseminators of the culture of western Europe,[113]--the Bosnian district women doctors. The first of these was Dr. Feodora Krajevska in Dolna Tuszla, now in Serajewo. Now she has several women colleagues. The women doctors wear uniforms,--a black coat, a black overcoat with crimson facings and with two stars on the collar.

PERSIA

Total population: about 9,500,000.

In Persia hardly a beginning of the woman's rights movement exists. The Report[114] that I have before me closes thus: "The Persian woman lives, as it were, a negative life, but does not seem to strive for a change in her condition." Certainly not. Like the Turkish and the Arabian woman, she is bound by the Koran. Her educational opportunities are even less (there are very few European schools, governesses, and women doctors in Persia).

Her field of activity is restricted to agriculture, domestic service, tailoring, and occasionally, teaching. However, she is said to be quite skillful in the management of her financial affairs. As far as I know, the Persian woman took no part in the const.i.tutional struggle of 1908-1909.

INDIA

Total population: 300,000,000.

The Indian woman's rights movement originated through the efforts of the English. The movement is as necessary and as difficult as the movement in China. The Indian religions teach that woman should be despised. "A cow is worth more than a thousand women." The birth of a girl is a misfortune: "May the tree grow in the forest, but may no daughter be born to me."[115]

Formerly it was permissible to drown newborn girls; the English government had to abolish this barbarity (as it abolished the suttee). The Indian woman lives in her apartment, the zenana; here the mother-in-law wields the scepter over the daughters-in-law, the grandchildren, and the women servants. The small girl learns to cook and to embroider; anything beyond that is iniquitous: woman has no brain. The girls that are educated in England must upon their return again don the veil and adjust themselves to native conditions. At the age of five or six the little girls are engaged, sometimes to young men of ten or twelve years, sometimes to men of forty or fifty. The marriage takes place several years later. Sometimes a man has more than one wife. The wife waits on her husband while he is eating; she eats what remains.

If the wife bears a son, she is reinstated. If she is widowed, she must fast and constantly offer apologies for existing. The widows and orphans were the first natives to become interested in the higher education of women. This was due to economic and social conditions.

India was the cradle of mankind. Even the highest civilizations still bear indelible marks of the dreadful barbarities that have just been mentioned.

The Indian woman has rebelled against her miserable condition. The English women considered it possible to bring health, hope, and legal aid to the women of the zenana, through women doctors, women missionaries, and women lawyers. Hence in 1866 zenana missions were organized by English women doctors and missionaries. Native women were soon studying medicine in order to bring an end to the superst.i.tions of the zenana. Dr. Clara Swain came to India in 1869 as the first woman medical missionary. As early as 1872-1873 the first hospital for women was founded; in 1885, through the work of Lady Dufferin, there originated the Indian National League for Giving Medical Aid to Women (_Nationalverband fur arztliche Frauenhilfe in Indien_).

Native women have studied law in order to represent their s.e.x in the courts. Their chief motive was to secure an opportunity of conferring with the women in the zenana, a privilege not granted the male lawyer. The first Indian woman lawyer, Cornelia Sorabija, was admitted to the bar in Poona. Even in England the women have not yet been granted this privilege.

This is easily explained. The Indian women cannot be clients of men lawyers; what men lawyers cannot take, they generously leave to the women lawyers.

India has 300,000,000 people; hence these meager beginnings of a woman's rights movement are infinitesimal when compared with the vast work that remains undone.[116] The educated Indian woman is partic.i.p.ating in the nationalist movement that is now being directed against English rule.

Brahmanism hinders the Indian woman in making use of the educational opportunities offered by the English government. Brahmanism and its priests nourish in woman a feeling of humility and the fear that she will lose her caste through contact with Europeans and infidels. The Pa.r.s.ee women and the Mohammedan women do not have this fear. The Pa.r.s.ee women (Pundita Ramabai, for example) have played a leading part in the emanc.i.p.ation of their s.e.x in India. But the Mohammedan women of India are reached by the movement only with difficulty. By the Hindoo of the old regime, woman is kept in great ignorance and superst.i.tion; her education is limited to a small stock of aphorisms and rules of etiquette; her life in the zenana is largely one of idleness. "Ennui almost causes them to lose their minds" is a statement based on the reports of missionaries.

There are modern schools for girls in all large cities (Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, etc.). The status of the native woman has been Europeanized to the greatest extent in Bengal. The best educated of the native women of all cla.s.ses are the dancing girls (_bayaderes_); unfortunately they are not "virtuous women" (_honnetes femmes_), hence education among women has been in ill repute.

A congress of women was held in Calcutta in 1906 with a woman as chairman; this congress discussed the condition of Indian women. At the medical congress of 1909, in Bombay, Hindoo women doctors spoke effectively. The women doctors have formed the a.s.sociation of Medical Women in India. In Madras there is published the _Indian Ladies' Magazine_.[117]

CHINA[118]

Total population: 426,000,000.

The Chinese woman of the lower cla.s.ses has the same status as the Mohammedan woman,--ostensible freedom of movement, and hard work. The women of the property owning cla.s.ses, however, must remain in the house; here, entertaining one another, they live and eat, apart from the men. As woman is not considered in the Chinese worship of ancestors, her birth is as unwished for as that of the Indian woman. Among the poor the birth of a daughter is an economic misfortune. Who will provide for her? Hence in the three most densely populated provinces the murder of girl babies is quite common. In many cases mothers kill their little girls to deliver them from the misery of later life. The father, husband, and the mother-in-law are the masters of the Chinese woman. She can possess property only when she is a widow (see the much more liberal provisions of the Koran).

The earnings of the Chinese wife belong to her husband. But in case of a dispute in this matter, no court would decide in the husband's favor, for he is supposed to be "the bread winner" of the family. Polygamy is customary; but the Chinese may have only _one_ legitimate wife (while the Mohammedan may have four). The concubine has the status of a _hetaera_; she travels with the man, keeps his accounts, etc. The Chinese woman of the property owning cla.s.s lives, in contrast to the Hindoo woman, a life filled with domestic duties. She makes all the clothes for the family; even the most wealthy women embroider. Frequently the wife succeeds in becoming the adviser of the husband. A widow is not despised; she can remarry. The women of the lower cla.s.ses engage in agriculture, domestic service, the retail business, all kinds of agencies and commission businesses, factory work (to a small extent), medical science (practiced in a purely experimental way), and midwifery; they carry burdens and a.s.sist in the loading and unloading of ships. Women's wages are one half or three fourths of those of the men.

The lives of the Chinese women, especially among the lower cla.s.ses, are so wretched that mothers believe they are doing a good deed when they strangle their little girls, or place them on the doorstep where they will be gathered up by the wagon that collects the corpses of children. Many married women commit suicide. "The suffering of the women in this dark land is indescribable," says an American woman missionary. Those Chinese women that believe in the transmigration of souls hope "in the next world to be anything but a woman."

Foreign women doctors, like the women missionaries, are bringing a little cheer into these sad places. Most of these women are English or American.

The beginning of a real woman's rights movement is the work of the Anti-Foot-Binding societies, which are opposing the binding of women's feet. This reform is securing supporters among men and women.

For seventeen years there has existed a school for Chinese women. This was founded by Kang You Wei, the first Chinese to demand that both s.e.xes should have the same rights. The women that have devoted themselves during these seventeen years to the emanc.i.p.ation of their s.e.x must often face martyrdom. Tsin King, the founder of a semimonthly magazine for women, and of a modern school for girls, met death on the scaffold in 1907 during a political persecution directed against all progressive elements.

Another woman's rights advocate, Miss Sin Peng Sie, donated 200,000 taels (a tael is equivalent to 72.9 cents) for the erection of a _Gymnasium_ for girls in her native city, 100,000 taels to endow a pedagogical magazine, and 50,000 taels for the support of minor schools for girls. Still another woman's rights advocate, Wu Fang Lan, resisted every attempt to bind her feet in the traditional manner. There exists a woman's league, through whose efforts the government, in 1908, prohibited the binding of the feet of little girls.

In recent years the _women's magazines_ have increased in number. Four large publications, devoted solely to women's interests, are published in Canton; five are published in Shanghai, and about as many in every other large city. The new system of education (adopted in 1905) grants women freedom. Girls' schools have been opened everywhere; in the large cities there are girls' secondary schools in which the Chinese cla.s.sics, foreign languages, and other cultural subjects are taught. In Tien Tsin there is a seminary for women teachers.

Sie Tou Fa, a prominent Chinese administrative official (who is also a governor and a lawyer), recently delivered a lecture in Paris on the status of the Chinese woman. This lecture contradicts the statements made above. Among other things he declared that China has produced too many distinguished women (in the political as well as in other fields) for law and public opinion to restrict the freedom of woman. "The Chinese admits superiority, with all its consequences, as soon as he sees it; and this, whether it is shown by man or woman."[119] According to him there can be no woman's rights movement in China, because man does not oppress woman!

He declares that the progress of women in China since 1905 is a manifestation of patriotism, not of feminism. According to our experiences the opinions of Sie Tou Fa are attributable to a peculiarly masculine way of observing things.

j.a.pAN AND KOREA[120]

Total population: 46,732,876.

Women: 23,131,236.

Men: 23,601,640.

Previous to the thirteenth century the j.a.panese woman, when compared with the other women of the Far East, occupied a specially favored position,--as wife and mother, as scholar, author, and counselor in business and political affairs. All these rights were lost during the civil wars waged in the period between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. War and militarism are the sworn enemies of woman's rights. A further cause of the j.a.panese woman's loss of rights was the strong influence of Chinese civilization, embodied in the teachings of Confucius.

The j.a.panese woman was expected to be obedient; her virtues became pa.s.sive and negative. In the seaports and chief cities, European influence has during the last fifty years caused changes in the dress, general bearing, and social customs of the j.a.panese. During the past thirty years these changes have been furthered by the government. While j.a.pan was rising to the rank of a great world power, she was also providing an excellent educational system for women. The movement began with the erection of girls' schools. The Empress is the patroness of an "Imperial Educational Society," a "Secondary School for Girls," and "Educational Inst.i.tute for the Daughters of n.o.bles," and of a "Seminary for Women Teachers." All of these inst.i.tutions are in Tokio. Women formed in 1898 13 per cent of the total number of teachers.

j.a.panese women of wealth and women of the n.o.bility support these educational efforts; they also support the "Charity Bazaar Society," the Orphans' Home, and the Red Cross Society. The Red Cross Society trained an excellent corps of nurses, as the Russo-j.a.panese War demonstrated.

Women are employed as government officials in the railroad offices; they are also employed in banks. j.a.panese women study medicine, pharmacy, and midwifery in special inst.i.tutions,[121] which have hundreds of women enrolled. Many women attend commercial and technical schools. Women are engaged in industry,--at very low wages, to be sure; but this fact enables j.a.pan to compete successfully for markets. The number of women in industry exceeds that of the men; in 1900 there were 181,692 women and 100,962 men industrially engaged. In the textile industry 95 per cent of the laborers are women. Women also outnumber the men in home industries. Women's average daily wages are 12-1/2 cents. Women remain active in commerce and industry, for the workers are recruited from the lower cla.s.ses, and they have been better able to withstand Chinese influence. Chinese law (based on the teachings of Confucius) still prevails with all its harshness for the j.a.panese woman.