Scholion. On the Emancipation of Women

I. Moderns distinguish a threefold emancipation of women: physiological, economic, and social: physiological, insofar as women wish, by their own free will, to be freed or to be free from the burdens of a wife, whether conjugal or maternal; economic, by which women wish, even without the husband knowing and with him objecting, to be freely able to have, conduct, and administer their own affairs for themselves, with children, husband, and the whole family set aside; social, insofar as they remove domestic cares, whether of children or of the family, from the wife, so that, with these neglected, she may be able to indulge her own talent and be devoted to affairs and offices, even public ones.¹

II. The threefold emancipation set forth is altogether to be rejected. And indeed the physiological is manifestly a wicked deed, because it entirely neglects the rights and burdens intrinsically joined to marriage. The economic is opposed to the subjection owed to the husband. As to the social, however, we note these things.

1. Social emancipation is not true emancipation of woman, that is, it by no means procures for woman that liberty which is owed to the office of a Christian woman and wife; rather, it is a denial of the feminine character, a corruption of maternal dignity, and a perversion of the whole family. It is said:

a) A corruption of the feminine character; for that equality of rights which is so greatly exaggerated and claimed must indeed be acknowledged in those things which are proper to the human person and dignity, and which follow the nuptial compact and are inherent in marriage; in these indeed each spouse enjoys altogether the same right and is held by the same debt; but in other matters, the natural character of the female sex itself, both lesser aptitude for public affairs and offices, and the natural disposition suggest a certain inequality.

b) A corruption of maternal dignity; since through the said emancipation woman descends from that royal seat to which she was raised within the domestic walls through the Gospel, and in a short time will be reduced to the old servitude (if not in appearance, yet in very truth), and it will come about that, as among the pagans, she will be a mere instrument of man.

c) A perversion of the whole family, because through that emancipation the husband is deprived of a wife, the offspring of a mother, the house and the whole family of an ever-watchful guardian.²

2. "Yet if anywhere the social and economic conditions of the married woman, on account of changed modes and usages of human intercourse, must in some way be changed, it belongs to public authority to adapt the civil rights of the wife to the necessities and needs of this time, with account indeed taken of those things which the diverse natural character of the female sex, honorable morals, and the common good of the family require, provided also that the essential order of domestic society remain unharmed, which has been founded by an authority and wisdom higher than human, that is, divine, and cannot be changed either by public laws or by private good pleasure" (cited encyclical).

¹ Encyclical of Pius XI Casti connubii, December 31, 1930.

² Cf. cited encyclical.