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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: cunning and our heart its strength, that today, when human labour is easier
and humanity's work grows fairer, you say to us, 'You can do nothing now
but child-bear'? Do you dare to say this, to us, when the upward path of
the race has been watered by the sweat of our brow, and the sides of the
road by which humanity has climbed are whitened on either hand by the bones
of the womanhood that has fallen there, toiling beside man? Do you dare
say this, to us, when even today the food you eat, the clothes you wear,
the comfort you enjoy, is largely given you by the unending muscular toil
of woman?"
As the women of old planted and reaped and ground the grain that the
children they bore might eat; as the maidens of old spun that they might
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