s than are those of the male; which
makes her exclusion from human functions the more mischievous.

Our current teachings in the infant science of Political Economy are
naively masculine. They assume as unquestionable that "the economic man"
will never do anything unless he has to; will only do it to escape pain
or attain pleasure; and will, inevitably, take all he can get, and do
all he can to outwit, overcome, and if necessary destroy his antagonist.

Always the antagonist; to the male mind an antagonist is essential to
progress, to all achievement. He has planted that root-thought in all
the human world; from that old hideous idea of Satan, "The Adversary,"
down to the competitor in business, or the boy at the head of the class,
to be superseded by another.

Therefore, even in science, "the struggle for existence" is the dominant
law--to the male mind, with the "survival of the fittest" and "the
elimination of the unfit."

Therefore in industry and economics we find always and everywhere the
antagonist; the necessity for somebody or something to be overcome--else
why make an effort? If you have not the incentive of reward, or the
incentive of combat, why work? "Competition is the life of trade."

Thus the Economic Man.

But how about the Economic Woman?

To the androcentric mind she does not exist. Women are females, and
that's all; their working abilities are limited to personal service.

That it would be possible to develop industry to far greater heights,
and to find in social economics a simple and beneficial process for the
promotion of human life and prosperity, under any other impulse than
these two, Desire and Combat, is hard indeed to recognize--for the "male
mind."

So absolutely interwoven are our existing concepts of maleness and
humanness, so sure are we that men are people and women only females,
that the claim of equal weight and dignity in human affairs of the
feminine instincts and methods is scouted as absurd. We find existing
industry almost wholly in male hands; find it done as men do it; assume
that that is the way it must be done.

When women suggest that it could be done differently, their proposal is
waved aside--they are "only women"--their ideas are "womanish."

Agreed. So are men "only men," their ideas are "mannish"; and of the two
the women are more vitally human than the men.

The female is the race-type--the man the variant.

The female, as a race-type, having the female