By Wendy McElroy
In 1929 the English writer Virginia Woolf inserted a famous phrase
into feminist history: “a room of one’s own.” The main theme of her extended essay by this name is that “a woman
must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” or, more
generally, to live according to her own convictions. She need a room with a
lock — a safe and private place. In short, economic independence is the bedrock
of all other freedoms.
Woolf was among the fortunate few who inherited money
and so inherited her independence. The vast majority of women needed to earn it
through sustained labor. Her elite status may explain why Woolf’s commentary
missed a key factor defining the status of poor women surrounding them.
Although Woolf correctly denounced social prejudice as
a barrier to women’s economic advancement, it was only when prejudice was
embedded into law that women were consigned to the kitchen or unskilled labor.
Whenever the law was weakened, poor women surged into rooms of their own.
Nevertheless, Woolf’s essay is honored as an early
blast at patriarchy and an indictment of the unfettered marketplace. Instead of
recognizing how regulation harms poor women, Woolf’s descendants have called
for an ever more shackled marketplace.
What were the circumstances for English working women
in 1929? A tug-of-war was occurring between the repeal of economic legislation
and its imposition. The first led to greater opportunity for women; the second
closed doors. Both phenomena sprang largely from the same cataclysmic event:
World War I (1914-1918)
War Years
During the war years, an estimated two million women
stepped out of the kitchen to fill the jobs vacated by enlisted men. Millicent
Fawcett, president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
(1897-1918), declared, “The war revolutionised the industrial position of women
— it found them serfs and left them free.”
After the war women’s economic status blurred, with
many employers replacing women with returning men. Three factors ensured that
women would remain in the workforce, however.
- Some women embraced their wider sphere and would
not willingly retreat into economic shadows.
- Britain’s huge death and casualty rate in the war meant that abled bodied men were
less available. Approximately
750,000 men died, with 2.5 million claiming disability.
- Many women faced a future as widows or spinsters
responsible for their own sustenance.
British law reacted to women’s changing status in
contradictory ways. The Sex Disqualification Removal Act of 1919 eliminated legal
barriers to women in the civil service, courts and universities, thus
recognizing their wider role. When this legal barrier was lifted, women surged
forward. Carrie Morrison became the first female solicitor three years later.
Overwhelmingly, however, the act benefited well-to-do women.
Although the civil service might have served as a
stepping stone for all poor women, it became regulated at the urgent request of
women themselves. Despite fewer employable men, Britain experienced the general
unemployment brought by the Great Depression. Widows and spinsters wanted
married women who sought the same jobs discriminated against. For example, in
1921 an estimated 102,000 female civil servants pushed forward a resolution to
ban married women; it remained in force until 1946.
Over and over the preceding scenario replayed during
the twentieth century. Laws were repealed and all women advanced; laws were
passed and some women were set back.
Protection Equals Privilege
Even laws intended to protect women, like the civil
service restriction, ended up privileging one class of women at the expense of
another. This too has escaped the notice of Woolf’s descendants who have
lobbied passionately for the restriction on free employment, from affirmative
action to pay equity, from mandated quotas to paid maternity leave.
I’ve had reason to notice. I once needed a room of my
own. And I know on a personal level how laws can harm those they intend to
protect. I ran away from home at 16 years old because the streets were safer than
my family. Unfortunately it was Canada in December and sleeping in a church
with an open-door policy was a stop-gap measure at best. I needed a room with
heat and a door that locked.
I was lucky because I was 16-years-old.
Child labor laws designed to protect children from exploitation did not apply
to me, and so I was able to get a minimum-wage job in a furniture store, filing
years worth of boxed papers. If I had been “protected” either as a child or a
female from being able to negotiate for less money than other applicants
demanded, I would not have been able to to rent a room in a boardinghouse.
Instead, I would have been “protected” into begging, stealing, dealing drugs,
or sex work. Like most runaways, I would not have “turned myself” into the authorities
known as social services.
What saved me was the ability to contract on my own
terms so that I could buy a room with a lock and go on to build a life.
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