# VI explained — Women and Economics

> Chapter companion for Women and Economics by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

## What happens

This chapter examines the economic dimension of the sexuo-economic relation, arguing that the combination of individual sex-relations with increasingly collective economic processes creates social strain. It traces the evolution from primitive individual competition to social cooperation, and shows how the economic dependence of women perpetuates individualism and sex-competition, corrupting both social economics and personal ethics.

## Themes in this chapter

### Economic Dependence of Women

The chapter details how women's economic reliance on men perpetuates individual competition and undermines social cooperation.

### Sexuo-Economic Relation

Central to the chapter: the fusion of sex and economics distorts both individual development and social progress.

### Social Evolution and Progress

The chapter contrasts primitive individual competition with the evolutionary trend toward collective economic organization.

## Character check-ins

### Unknown Narrator

The narrator analyzes the economic and social consequences of the sexuo-economic relation, using analogies from primitive competition to modern industrial greed.

### Jean Ingelow

Quoted for a poem expressing the ideal of working to support a family, illustrating the link between labor and the sexuo-economic relation.

### Pain

Mentioned in the context of the medieval tournament's brutality, contrasted with modern economic competition.

## Key lines

> Our difficulty about wealth is not in getting it out of the earth, but in getting it away from one another.

The main economic problem is not production but distribution and competition for resources.

_Highlights the shift from physical scarcity to social maldistribution._

> The contest in every good man's heart today between the 'ought to' and the 'must,' between his best work and the 'potboiler,' is his personal share of this incessant struggle between social interest and self-interest.

Men face an inner conflict between doing meaningful work and earning money to support their families.

_Illustrates the ethical compromise imposed by the sexuo-economic relation._

> Marriage makes a mouse of a man.

Marriage makes a man timid and submissive to unjust demands.

_Quoted from a novel to show how economic dependence in marriage undermines male integrity._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/women_and_economics_se/chapters/vi
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/women_and_economics_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/women_and_economics_se/chapters