opment have been at all equal. But here, to save
falling into a misconception, it is necessary to point out that I do
not say _the same opportunities, but equal_. This difference is so
important that, risking the fear of being tedious, I must restate my
belief in the unlikeness of the sexes. As Havelock Ellis says, "A man
is a man to his very thumbs, and a woman is a woman down to her little
toes." What I do mean, then, is this: _Have the opportunities of the
woman to develop as woman been equal to the opportunities of the man
to develop as man?_ It is on this question, it seems to me, that our
attention should be fixed.

Leaving for a little any attempt to find out in what directions this
development of woman can be most fully carried out, let us now clear
our way by glancing very briefly at certain plain facts of the actual
position of women as they present themselves in our society to-day.

In 1901 there were 1,070,000 more women than men in this country; this
surplus of women has increased slowly but steadily in every census
since 1841! Thus, those who hold (as all who look straight at this
matter must) that the essential need for the normal woman are
conditions that make possible the fulfilment of her sex-functions, are
placed in an awkward dilemma when they wish to restrict her activities
to marriage and the home. By such narrowing of the sexual sphere they
are not taking into consideration the facts as they exist to-day. In a
society where the women outnumber the men by more than a million, it
is sufficiently evident that justice can be done to these primary
needs of woman only by adopting one of two courses, the placing of
women in a position which secures to them the possession of property,
or, if their dependence on the labours of men is maintained, the
recognition of some form of polygamy. Here is no advocacy of any
sexual licence or of free-love, but I do set up a claim for free
motherhood, and however great the objections that may, and, as I
think, must be raised against polygamy, I am unhesitating in stating
my belief that any open and brave facing of the facts of the sex
relationship is better than our present ignorance or hypocritical
indifference, which is spread like a shroud over our national
conditions of concealed polygamy for men, side by side with enforced
celibacy and unconcealed prostitution for a great number of women. The
most hopeful sign of the woman's movement is a new solidarity that is