Her problem with the term “feminism” has to do with the fact that she thinks it overemphasises the differences between the sexes instead of questioning them.

But it was interesting to notice that the reasons she gives for not being a feminist are the very same reasons why I do call myself one. Even the dairy-maid in her simple bonnet has gone, to be replaced by a male mechanic in charge of a mechanical milking plant.These essays are still as relevant today as they were in 1938.Sayers begins the first essay by rejecting the term “feminism” – this didn’t surprise me (Virginia Woolf did the same, after all), nor did it lessen my appreciation for what she had to say. It is all very well to say that woman’s place is the home-but modern civilisation has taken all these pleasant and profitable activities out of the home, where the women looked after them, and handed them over to big industry, to be directed and organised by men at the head of large factories. Here are the women’s jobs-and what has become of them? They are all being handled by men. And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together on war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates. All the preserving, pickling and bottling industry, all the bacon-curing. The whole catering industry and-which would not please Lady Astor, perhaps-the whole of the nation’s brewing and distilling.

“It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything 'funny' about woman's nature.”Īre Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as 'The women, God help us!' or 'The ladies, God bless them!' who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension who took their questions and arguments seriously who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. “Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross.

Are women human dorothy sayers pdf