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Why are women unpaid for their domestic labor while remaining summarily excluded from the workforce? Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in Women and Economics, sought to answer this question over a hundred years ago, providing the intellectual framework needed to propel feminism into the mainstream. As we approach the middle of yet another century, her words ring truer than ever.
About the author
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - também conhecida pelo nome de casada Charlotte Perkins Stetson - nasceu a 3 de julho de 1860 na cidade de Hartford, Estado do Connecticut, Estados Unidos da América. Veio a falecer na cidade de Pasadena, no Estado da Califórnia, Estados Unidos da América a 17 de agosto de 1935 aos 75 anos, apologista da eutanásia, terminou a sua vida tendo cometido suicídio por via de uma overdose de clorofórmio. Quer na sua autobiografia, quer na sua nota de suicídio, ela escreveu preferir o clorofórmio ao cancro. Faleceu rápida e silenciosamente.Charlotte Perkins Gilman foi uma escritora, novelista, ativista social e proeminente feminista (utópica). Gilman era bastante menos revolucionária noutros aspetos, dir-se-á até mesmo retrógrada à luz dos dias de hoje e conservadora na sua época. A determinada altura defensora do Darwinismo Social, acreditava que isso ajudaria à luta feminista. Opunha-se à miscigenação e defendia uma sociedade cuja harmonia se baseava no eurocentrismo racial.No entanto, devemos vê-la à luz da sua época, e que pese as suas perspetivas racistas e eugénicas, ela deixou uma obra de valor literário e artístico, e permanece para as gerações vindouras como um ponto de referência e grande influência para muitos dos passos do feminismo ao longo do século XX, mais ou menos radical.
Summary
Women and Economics (1898) is a sociological and economic study by American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Inspired by her work as a social reformer and advocate for women’s suffrage, Gilman sought to write a work of nonfiction that explained the need to introduce women into the workforce while alleviating their responsibilities as wives and mothers. Women and Economics, arguably Gilman’s most important work, employs the theories of Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Thorstein Veblen to not only assess the damage done to women and human society by inequality, but to propose realistic ways of eliminating gender oppression while benefitting humanity at large.
Observing that women in their roles as wives and mothers tend to work harder for longer hours than men while being excluded from the work force, Gilman proposes that the progress of human society depends upon the equality of men and women in all aspects of working and domestic life. She acknowledges the importance of the suffragist movement—in which she was a leading figure—while making the case for the economic equality of men and women in addition to the democratic equality sought by their activism. Ultimately, Gilman advocates for the professionalization of domestic work, suggesting that women should be allowed to enter the workforce while hiring others to care for and educate their children as well as perform the duties necessary for the upkeep of the home. Grounding her work in the dominant sociological, biological, and economic theories of the time, Gilman provided the intellectual arguments necessary for elevating the feminist cause from a popular movement to a true political force. Women and Economics is a powerful work of sociological thought by a leading reformer and feminist of her day.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Women and Economics is a classic of American literature and nonfiction reimagined for modern readers.
