Humanist women

Humanist, Jan-Feb, 1993 by Beverley Earles

One day I would like to write a book about the contributions humanist women have made not only to the humanist movement but to modern civilization. When I once mentioned this to a male humanist friend, he said, "Well, it would be a very short book." Needless to say, I have since dropped this individual to acquaintance level! But let us look at what he meant.

He meant, of course, that women have made only a small contribution to humanism, and that one really has to dig to find any of an outstanding quality. This opinion, furthermore, was probably based on a number of not uncommon assumptions within the humanist movement, of which I will mention three.

First is the assumption that one looks for contributions in published theoretical works, particularly those which have received a measure of academic acclaim.

Second is the assumption that one should look for outstanding humanists among those who have held positions of leadership in the movement. At conferences of some humanist organizations, one notices that the top table often bears a remarkable resemblance to the Politburo: all male and virtually all within a certain age group. What message is delivered by this? It is that authority continues to be located with men over the age of 50. While this state of affairs is no longer typical of congregationally styled humanist groups, it is unfortunately still a feature of a number of others, some with a high profile in international humanist circles.

Third is the assumption that the awards bestowed by the various humanist organizations give an accurate picture of who has been who in the movement. Thus, if we look at some (not all) of the more prominent humanist organizations, we find an array of awardees that is overwhelmingly male. The American Humanist Association used to belong to this group; however, there have been great changes in the AHA since the mid-1970s and these have reflected a much broader notion of what a contribution is and consequently of who has made such contributions.

The point is that those organizations that have consistently given awards to men give the impression that only contributions of men are significant. I will argue that this patriarchal system of values must be questioned and that, when it is questioned, the significant contributions of humanist women become visible. Consider some of the strategies by which women have been erased from the history of our culture in general, as well as from the history of the humanist movement.

The first strategy has been the theft of women's work, either by men using women's ideas and calling them their own or by publishers and editors attributing the work to men even when they have been in fun possession of facts to the contrary. Dora and Bertrand Russell jointly wrote a book called The Prospects of Industrial Civilization, yet biographer Ronald Clark has attributed the main ideas to Bertrand Russell. Knowing Dora's work as well as I do, I can assure you that Clark has done this with no justification whatsoever.

One of the "problems" for scholars of John Stuart Mill has been that he was most emphatic about the importance of Harriet Taylor in the shaping of his ideas and prose. Mill referred to his publications from 1840 onward, including On Liberty, as "joint productions." In a 1986 humanist publication of the Subjection of Women, there is no mention of Harriet Taylor as collaborator, although other influences on Mill - those of Coleridge, Comte, and Wordsworth - are given due recognition. To make matters worse, this humanist reprint says on the cover that here John Stuart Mill "strikes a powerful blow for women's rights."

Far too many critics have decided that, where his beloved Harriet Taylor was concerned, Mill was simply unreliable: really, all the good and progressive ideas were entirely his. But Harriet Taylor's reputation has also been severely undermined by the attribution of some of her separate writing to Mill. The article called the "Enfranchisement of Women," for example, which is more radical than anything Mill wrote, has been attributed to him. The fact is that Taylor did not believe that women should be educated in order to be fit companions for men, whereas Mill did so believe - at least where married women were concerned.

The stories of Dora Russell and Harriet Taylor show that, even when the facts of authorship have been laid out for all to see, historians and critics and publishers have managed to promote the so-called facts they wanted to see. When we add this strategy to others, it is no wonder we have lost track of our outstanding humanist women.

The first strategy, then, is theft, pure and simple. The second strategy is simply not recording - or, at the very least, greatly understating - the contribution women have made. Harriet Martineau was a highly influential writer on political economy in the London of her time, but she frequently makes it only to the footnotes. And what about Matilda Joslyn Gage, who in 1893 wrote the landmark book Women, Church, and State? Gage did not figure much in humanist circles, although I understand that someone is doing a dramatic portrayal of her in the Unitarian churches. Gage's book is a must for humanists. In it she wrote: "The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church toward women, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person." Gage questioned the whole fabric of nineteenth-century American society, both as a feminist and as what we today refer to as a humanist. I could name many others who have suffered the same fate, but I shall return to the case of Russell.