Crystal Eastman quote: “What is the problem of women’s freedom?”

“What is the problem of women’s freedom? It seems to me to be this: how to arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely varied ways, instead of being destined by the accident of their sex to one field of activity–housework and child-raising. And second, if and when they choose housework and child-raising to have that occupation recognized by the world as work, requiring a definite economic reward and not merely entitling the performer to be dependent on some man.”

– Crystal Eastman

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Notes:

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Crystal Eastman quote: “What is the problem of women’s freedom?” sources:

• Crystal Eastman, “Now We Can Begin” (1920).

• Portrait taken circa 1915 – Edmonston, Washington, D.C. Mrs. Crystal Eastman Benedict of New York is a member of the Executive Committee of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. Mrs. Benedict is a graduate of Vassar College and of the New York Law University. She was secretary of the New York State Commission which investigated the employers’ l. [to 1915 May 8] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/mnwp000367/>.