We have now considered four of our inquiries in the light of experimental evidence. We have discovered that a great amount of work remains to be done before we can answer most of them conclusively, and that to one question, at least, no answer at all can be given from the literature of fact. We can only say that, so far, scientific experiment has revealed no sex differences in the original nature of intellect that would imply a necessary differentiation of vocations on the ground of sex. There exist no scientific data to show (1) differences in average intellect; (2) differences in mental variability; (3) special causes of intellectual inefficiency affecting one sex but not the other; (4) differences in affective or instinctive equipment, implying a "natural" division of labor.
The division of labor between the sexes, which has existed through historic times and still persists, originated, so far as we know, in physiological, not in psychological differences. The momentous physiological fact that women bear and nourish infants and men do not, is the great primary sex difference on which our economic and vocational organization has been built up. It might be supposed that natural selection would have evolved an intellectual (or unintellectual) type in women, which could find its complete natural satisfaction in the vocation of child-bearing and child-rearing. But such a selection could take place only if mental traits were sex-limited in inheritance, or existed as secondary sex characteristics. No mental trait has ever been proved to be sex-limited in inheritance, or to exist as a secondary sex character. So far as we know, daughters inherit mental traits from fathers as well as from mothers, and sons inherit them from mothers as well as from fathers. Under such circumstances the law of natural selection can never become operative to solve the vocational problems of women.
The fact that women have not in the past equaled men in "philosophy, science, art, invention and management" is frequently adduced as evidence of their innate unfitness for pursuits other than the domestic. From such evidence, however, we glean in reality no information whatever about the vocational aptitudes of women. We should not expect any notable achievement by women in the fields mentioned above, for the following reasons. Women must bear and nourish infants, and men cannot. The period of gestation and the period of infancy are very protracted in the human species, together covering, for each infant reared, about six years. Until very recently no scientific methods of controlling procreation have been generally known or utilized. Thus women have borne great numbers of infants, all their youth and maturity being consumed by bearing and rearing young. The small minority of women whose lives happened not to be so consumed would be very unlikely to make any contributions in extra-domestic vocational achievement for two reasons. In the first place, all women were expected to mate and thus to procreate and rear offspring, and no provision was made by society for their training in lines other than those they would be expected to use. In the second place, those women who did not meet the common fate failed to do so for some special reason, such as ill health, mental disease, or the necessity of caring for decrepit relatives. The very causes of their celibacy would operate also against any vocational achievement on their part.