The Economic Aspect of Woman Suffrage April 4, 1914

John Cowper Powys, April 4, 1914
“Women, by being near the flow of life, by being the true creators, through the magic of the life force, of the world that is to be, understand certain things better than men do. And they understand, though they are too wise to put it into words, that in no sphere are there any absolutely fixed or external principles. There are relative truths only.
“How does this bear on the economic aspect of woman suffrage? Women will never be really free or have justice until Socialism is established. What makes woman a slave today is the economic condition which prevails. A certain number of people are afraid that if you made every woman the equal unit of society with every man, and made that unit the person and not the head of the family, every kind of catastrophe, moral and otherwise, would come about – free love the least of them.
“As a matter of fact it may turn out that the vote is not the most important aspect of the woman question. It may be more important to be a feminist than a suffragist, and it may even be that no one can be a suffragist in the logical sense without being a feminist too.”