"The woman question" is a phrase usually used in connection with a social change in the latter half of the 19th century, which questioned the fundamental roles of women in Western industrialized countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, and Russia. Issues of women's suffrage, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, property rights, legal rights, and medical rights, and marriage dominated cultural discussions in newspapers and intellectual circles. While many women were supportive of these changing roles, they did not agree unanimously. Often issues of marriage and sexual freedom were most divisive.
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Context
"The woman question" originally referred to an academic debate in the 1530s as to whether women should be allowed to study in the universities. In the years that followed, many people took the opportunity to comment on the goodness of women in general, and also considered whether it was good for a man to marry. The academics decided that while men were not naturally smarter than women, women should not be allowed into the universities because they are not serious-minded enough. They lacked the grounding of a classical education and their temperament was not suited to serious study.
The debate over the nature and role of women can be understood in part as a development of the Romantic movement's exploration in fiction and drama (and opera) of the nature of 'man', of human beings as individuals and as members of society. In this, it is clearly prominent in such works as Die Walküre, Effi Briest, Madame Bovary, Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, A Doll's House, and Hedda Gabler. Each of these treats women's emotional, social, economic, and religious lives.
History
The term was first used in France: the "Querelle des femmes" (lit. "the question of the women"). From 1450 into the years that witnessed the beginning of the Reformation, the institution of marriage had fallen into question. Heinrich Agrippa contended that men in society were not oppressing women because of some natural law, but because they wanted to keep their social power and status. This began a long literary quarrel.
On one side of the quarrel, many argued that women were inferior to men because man was created by God first, and were therefore stronger and more important. Also, much of Christianity, throughout the ages, has viewed women as the Daughters of Eve, the original temptress responsible for humanity being expelled from the Garden of Eden.
On the other hand, many believed that Eve was the deceived, not the deceiver. Some like Agrippa argued for the nobility of women, who thought women were created better than men. He argued that in the first place, women being made better than man, received the better name. Man was called Adam, which means Earth; woman Eva, which is by interpretation Life. Man was created from the dust of the earth, while woman was made from something far purer. Agrippa's metaphysical argument was that creation itself is a circle that began when God created light and ended when he created woman. Therefore, women and light occupy adjacent points on the circle of creation and must have similar properties of purity.
The term "Querelle des femmes" is used in England in the Victorian era, stimulated, for example, by the Reform Act 1832 and the Reform Act 1867. The Industrial Revolution brought hundreds of thousands of lower-class women into factory jobs, presenting a challenge to traditional ideas of a woman's place.
A prime issue of contention was whether what was referred to as women's "private virtue" could be transported into the public arena; opponents of women's suffrage claimed that bringing women into public would dethrone them, and sully their feminine virtue.
Areas of discussion
The woman question was raised in many different social areas. For example, in the second half of the 19th century, in the context of religion, extensive discussion within the United States took place on the participation of women in church. In the Methodist Episcopal Church, the woman question was the most pressing issue in the 1896 conference.