November 10, 1912, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

This letter is Davison’s response to “Bachelor’s” letter of November 3, the previous week, alleging women’s inferiority in respect to male accomplishments. She takes a new approach, arguing that women have expressed their ability and creativity with people, in the family especially, an argument that changes the playing field of the debate and rouses little opposition in people who fear that suffrage will separate women from their domestic duties:

Sir, –The point missed by your correspondent is that women have been creative and inventive all down the ages and centuries, but that until recently their efforts have been confined to persons rather than to things. That is the subtle distinction. Mothers and wives of great men have been the greatest creators of their ages and their name is legion and ever recurring. It is only in a later age that women, being in the majority, have found that the human field is no longer the exclusive object of their constructive power. –Yours, etc.