The Emancipation of Women

285. State of the question. 1. The theories set forth above concerning the man as head of the family, to whom woman ought to be subject, are vehemently opposed by all who contend that women are to be made equal to men, so that men and women enjoy the same rights and are held in the same place. Since a threefold order is distinguished, in which rights equal with men can be attributed to women, the domestic order, the social or economic order, and the political order, equality between man and woman can be more or less perfect, according as it is extended to all the orders, or to only one or another.

2. Since now equality does not flourish between man and woman, but in domestic society woman is subject to man, while in other orders of life she is of an inferior condition, the effort of introducing equality is called the emancipation of women. This is more or less perfect, according as only political and economic emancipation is intended, or also domestic emancipation.

3. Diverse in this question are the studies and opinions of authors. Some demand perfect equality of man and woman in domestic, economic, and political life, so that woman not only may acquire the right of suffrage, but also be admitted to managing public offices, can exercise the same arts and businesses which are exercised by men, and finally at home not be subject to the man: radical emancipation. Others chiefly demand equality of women in the political and economic order. Others finally restrict the equality of women to the economic and social order: moderate emancipation. All likewise demand another and more perfect education and instruction of women. From moderate emancipation of women, especially in the economic and social order, after considering the circumstances of our time, not even theologians shrink away.

¹ Rosler, Die Frauenfrage^2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1907); Cathrein, Die Frauenfrage (Freiburg: Herder, 1901); Mausbach, Die Stellung der Frau im Menschheitsleben (M. Gladbach: Zentralstelle, 1906); Gnauck-Kuhne, Die deutsche Frau um die Jahrhundertwende (Berlin: Liebmann, 1907); Gnauck-Kuhne, Die soziale Lage der Frau (Berlin: Liebmann, 1895); Molsberger, Ratschlage zur Berufsfrage der Frau (Koln: Bachem); Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus^43 (Stuttgart: Dietz).

286. Principles to be held in this question are these:

a. Each, man and woman, possesses the same nature and the same personality, equally perfect as to substantial things, that is, human person. To each belongs the same destination to grace and glory, as child of God, heir of eternal life; each can and must work his or her salvation and attain Christian perfection independently of the other; and therefore from this side the duties and rights of each are the same: for in Christ there is neither male nor female.¹

b. But human nature and person, which is substantially the same, is expressed, developed, and operates in another and diverse mode in man and in woman: for the differences between feminine and masculine nature, as it exists in the concrete, are great and manifest both as to body and as to soul; and as to soul, both in the intellectual order and in the moral order.

The properties of nature diverse on each side show that the man is destined by nature to command and rule, but the woman, on the contrary, to be subject, to help the man and to be governed by him. Therefore nature confirms the condition of woman set forth above (n. 284), and the history of all times and of all peoples also confirms it.

c. In the social and political order, woman is to be excluded from those arts and businesses for which, considering her nature, she is less fit than man and which she cannot exercise without detriment to her natural destination, that is, to the office of mother of the family. But nothing prevents her from being admitted to arts and businesses for which either she is equally fit or more fit than man and which she can undertake without loss to the office of mother of the family.

¹ Gal. 3:28.

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.

The theory which holds that the married woman should be freed from all subordination, and put on a footing of perfect equality with her husband. There is a propaganda for a physiological emancipation which would withdraw the wife from the duties of a spouse and mother; an economic emancipation, which would assure her full liberty of movement enabling her to administer her property and her affairs as she pleases; and a social emancipation, which would free her from domestic duties and enable her to throw herself according to her natural bent into politics or business.

This total emancipation is rejected¹ as an upsetting of the entire domestic order, and a cheapening of woman herself, who, robbed of her glory of spouse and mother, would become once more what she was in the pagan world, a mere instrument of the passions of her husband. This so-called “emancipated” woman, now neither a virgin nor a mother, on whom the modern world thinks it is conferring freedom by enabling her to “live no longer for others but for herself, that is, for her pleasure and according to her whims,”

under the influence of concupiscences, the only rights now recognized, undergoes “the brutal domination of him who has received from nature the gift of strength, over her whose weakness will henceforth be defenseless, since she will no longer have the protection of the Christian laws of marriage.”² For that matter, what serious historian does not acknowledge that woman owes her dignity and her true liberty to the Gospel of Christ? Absolute equality is rejected because the interests of the family, the duties of married life, the unity and stability of the institution of marriage demand a certain inequality of rank. But the Sovereign Pontiff has made the necessary or fitting reservations beforehand especially where he recognizes the equal right of both parties to the marriage, to demand of the other the acts that are proper to married life. (See Number 55, above.)

¹ P. 44.

² Abbé Dermine, La Doctrine du mariage chrétien, pp. 81, 82. Here is a confirmation which is not without value, as it comes from a Paris organ of wide circulation, which is not Catholic in its tone. Under the title, Mon Film, the magazine, Le Journal, under date of Jan. 16, 1931, published this frank admission: “Free love, the equality of the sexes, the personal struggle for life—these things are contrary to woman’s deepest instincts, to her moral and physical nature, to her true interests; they are but a last resort in a society where woman, falling from her high position—for she is falling from it in spite of appearances—is in danger of becoming more and more unhappy.”

Not at all; it can and should adapt itself to varying circumstances. Thus no one objects to the abolition of certain legal disabilities of women regarding contracts. But these variations can never change essentially the order established by God.¹

¹ P. 45.

The Encyclical does not touch upon these points in any way. It disapproves only such an injection of woman into public life as would imply her desertion of the home.