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Appendix 5. A Parallel to the Negro Problem 1077
Negroes—have much in common and are closely interrelated. Paternalism was a pre-
industrial scheme of life, and was gradually becoming broken in the nineteenth century.
Negroes and women, both of whom had been under the yoke of the paternalistic system,
were both strongly and fatefully influenced by the Industrial Revolution. For neither
group is the readjustment process yet consummated. Both are still problem groups. The
women’s problem is the center of the whole complex of problems of how to reorganize
the institution of the family to fit the new economic and ideological basis, a problem
which js not solved in any part of the Western world unless it be in the Soviet Union or
Palestine. The family problem in the Negro group, as we find when analyzing the
Negro family, has its special complications, centering in the tension and conflict between
the external patriarchal system in which the Negro was confined as a slave and his own
family structure.
As in the Negro problem, most men have accepted as self-evident, until recently, the
doctrine that women had inferior endowments in most of those respects which carry
prestige, power, and advantages in society, but that they were, at the same time, superior
in some other respects. The arguments, when arguments were used, have been about the
same: smaller brains, scarcity of geniuses and so on. The study of women’s intelligence
and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes.
As in the case of the Negro, women themselves have often been brought to
believe in their inferiority of endowment. As the Negro was awarded his “place” in
society, so there was a “woman’s place.” In both cases the rationalization was strongly
believed that men, in confining them to this place, did not act against the true interest
of the subordinate groups. The myth of the “contented women,” who did not want
to have suflfrage or other civil rights and equal opportunities, had the same social function
as the myth of the “contented Negro.” In both cases there was probably—in a static
sense—often some truth behind the myth.
As to the character of the deprivations, upheld by Jaw or by social conventions and
the pressure of public opinion, no elaboration will here be made. As important and
illustrative in the comparison, we shall, however, stress the conventions governing
woman’s education. There was a time when the most common idea was that she was
better off with little education. Later the doctrine developed that she should not be
denied education, but that her education should be of a special type, fitting her for
her “place” in society and usually directed more on training her hands than her brains.
Political franchise was not granted to women until recently. Even now there are, in
all countries, great difficulties for a woman to attain public oflice. The most important
disabilities still affecting her status are those barring her attempt to earn a living and
to attain promotion in her work. As In the Negro’s case, there are certain “women’s
jobs,” traditionally monopolized by women. They are regularly in the low salary bracket
and do not offer much of a career. All over the world men have used the trade unions
to keep women out of competition. Woman’s competition has, like the Negro’s, been
particularly obnoxious and dreaded by men because of the low wages women, with their
few earning outlets, are prepared to work for. Men often dislike the very idea of having
women on an equal plane as co-workers and competitors, and usually they find it even
more “unnatural” to work under women. White people generally hold similar attitudes
toward Negroes. On the other hand, it is said about women that they prefer men as
bosses and do not want to work under another woman. Negroes often feel the same way
jjbont working under other Negroes,
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