price of the body, as it is called, of a
woman was less than that of a man. If a woman were accidentally killed,
less compensation had to be paid than for a man. I asked a Burman about
this once.

'Why is this difference?' I said. 'Why does the law discriminate?'

'It isn't the law,' he said, 'it is a fact. A woman is worth less than a
man in that way. A maidservant can be hired for less than a manservant,
a daughter can claim less than a son. They cannot do so much work; they
are not so strong. If they had been worth more, the law would have been
the other way; of course they are worth less.'

And so this sole discrimination is a fact, not dogma. It is a fact, no
doubt, everywhere. No one would deny it. The pecuniary value of a woman
is less than that of a man. As to the soul's value, that is not a
question of law, which confines itself to material affairs. But I
suppose all laws have been framed out of the necessities of mankind. It
was the incessant fighting during the times when our laws grew slowly
into shape, the necessity of not allowing the possession of land, and
the armed wealth that land gave, to fall into the weaker hands of women,
that led to our laws of inheritance.

Laws then were governed by the necessity of war, of subjecting
everything else to the ability to fight. Consequently, as women were not
such good fighters as men, they went to the wall. But feudalism never
obtained at all in Burma. What fighting they did was far less severe
than that of our ancestors, was not the dominant factor in the position,
and consequently woman did not suffer.

She has thus been given the inestimable boon of freedom. Freedom from
sacerdotal dogma, from secular law, she has always had.

And so, in order to preserve the life of the people, it has never been
necessary to pass laws treating woman unfairly as regards inheritance;
and as religion has left her free to find her own position, so has the
law of the land.

And yet the Burman man has a confirmed opinion that he is better than a
woman, that men are on the whole superior as a sex to women. 'We may be
inferior in some ways,' he will tell you. 'A woman may steal a march on
us here and there, but in the long-run the man will always win. Women
have no patience.'

I have heard this said over and over again, even by women, that they
have less patience than a man. We have often supposed differently. Some
Burmans have even supposed that a woman must be reincarnated