Page 14 - All India Magazine Oct-2025

Effects of War

War and Feminism
One of the first effects of the war has certainly been to give
quite a new aspect to the question. The futility of the perpetual
oppositions between men and women was at once made clearly
apparent, and behind the conflict of the sexes, only relating to ex-
terior facts, the gravity of the circumstances allowed the discovery
of the always existent, if not always out wardly manifested fact, of
the real collaboration, of the true union of these two complemen-
tary halves of humanity.
Many men were surprised to see how easily women could re-
place them in most of the posts they occupied before, and to their
surprise was added something of regret not to have found sooner
a real partner of their work and their struggles in her whom more
often they had only considered as an object of pleasure and dis-
traction, or at best as the guardian of their hearth and mother of
their children. Certainly woman is that and to be it well requires
exceptional qualities, but she is not only that, as the present cir-
cumstances have amply proved.
In going to tend the wounded in the most difficult material
conditions, actually under the enemy's fire, the so-called weak sex
has proved that its physical energy and power of endurance were
equal to those of man. But where, above all, women have given
proof of exceptional gifts is in their organising faculties. These fac-
ulties of administration were recognised in them long ago by the
Brahmanic India of before the Mohammedan conquest. There is
a popular adage there which says: "Property governed by woman
means prosperous property." But in the Occident Semitic thought
allied to Roman legislation has influenced customs too deeply for
women to have the opportunity of showing their capacity for or-
ganisation.
This is not to say that only woman's exceptional qualities have

14 All India Magazine, October 2025