And this divergence of experiences in human relations must react on their
attitude towards that particular body of human concerns which directly is
connected with the sexual reproduction of the race; and, it is exactly in
these fields of human activity, where sex as sex is concerned, that woman
as woman has a part to play which she cannot resign into the hands of
others.

It may be truly said that in the laboratory, the designing-room, the
factory, the mart, the mathematician's study, and in all fields of purely
abstract or impersonal labour, while the entrance of woman would add to the
net result of human labour in those fields, and though a grave injustice is
done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps the only field she is
fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman has probably little or nothing
to contribute in those fields that is radically distinct from that which
man might supply; there would be a difference in quantity but probably none
in kind, in the work done for the race.

But in those spheres of social activity, dealing especially with certain
relations between human creatures because of their diverse if complementary
relation to the production of human life, the sexes as sexes have often
each a part to play which the other cannot play for them; have each a
knowledge gained from phases of human experience, which the other cannot
supply; here woman as woman has something radically distinct to contribute
to the sum-total of human knowledge, and her activity is of importance, not
merely individually, but collectively, and as a class.

That demand, which today in all democratic self-governing countries is
being made by women, to be accorded their share in the electoral, and
ultimately in the legislative and executive duties of government, is based
on two grounds: the wider, and more important, that they find nothing in