Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Women And Economics

This essay aims to discuss and answer certain questions relating to the text, ‘Women and Economics - A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1899) [1898], to gain a wider understanding of the text.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3rd, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. As well as “Women and Economics”, Gilman published other works such as “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and had established a magazine called “The Forerunner” which allowed her to publish her views and opinions on the problems women face from 1909 to 1916. After the death of her second husband, George Gilman, she was diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer in 1935, this eventually led to her suicide on

Gilman also projects the ideas in her work towards all genders, this is noted continuously throughout chapter one as she repeatedly uses “we” and “us” to make both sexes understand the issues Gilman raises. For example, Gilman introduces the topic of inequality with “We are the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food” (Gilman, 1898: 5).

According to Patricia Hollis in ‘Women in Public, 1850-1900: Documents of the Victorian Women’s Movement’ (2013) there were three main stereotypes of women. The first stereotype was religion, in that women were created by God from a man and as a result of that, women were

The strengths of the first key argument that women are solely dependent on the male for survival is that she consistently uses animal imagery in order to explain her point. For example, “The female bee and ant are economically dependent, but not on the male.” (Gilman, 1898: 5) and “in the case of the common cat, she not only feeds herself and her young, but has to defend the young against the male as well.” (Gilman, 1898: 5). This strengthens her argument as the text continuously provides examples and comparisons to females in various other species. The strength of Gilman’s second argument is that the economic progress of the time was very much male dominated, which is also noted by T. H. Lister (1841, cited in Hollis, 2013: 8) that “Women, as a class, cannot enjoy, at the same time, the immunities of weakness and the advantages of power.” This helps to expand on Gilman’s point, that women had no power at the time as a woman’s life was ruled by men economically, socially and politically. Gilman’s third argument was that women contribute to society, but in the private area, not the public. Yet they are not economically independent because of the non-paid or minimal paid work that they do. This is reflected in ‘The Grounding of Modern Feminism’, “Since wage-earning women were not necessarily, or mostly, economically independent women – their wages were too low for