Two excellent reasons may be adduced why any disproportion in the
numbers of the sexes should be the opposite of that which now obtains.
The ideal condition, no doubt, is that of numerical equality. Failing
that, the evils of a male preponderance, though very real, are
comparatively small. For one thing, celibacy affects a woman more than a
man: men, on the whole, suffer less from being unmarried. It is a more
serious deprivation for the woman than for the man, in general, to be
debarred from parenthood. This is a proposition which we need not labour
here, for no reader will dispute its importance and its relevance.
No less important is the economic question. Specially consecrated as she
is to the future, woman as distinctive woman is necessarily handicapped
in relation to the present. She is at an economic disadvantage. One's
blood boils at the cruel effrontery of men who protest against women's
efforts to gain an honest living, but who have never a word or a deed
against prostitution or against the causes which produce the numerical
preponderance of women. But here again our proposition, though
unfamiliar, and indeed so far as I know never yet stated, needs no
labouring--that owing to the economic opportunities of the sexes, it is,
at any rate, on that ground, of no significance that men shall be in
excess in a community, but it is of very grave significance that women
shall be in excess.
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