According to the civil laws of most countries obedience is no longer the duty of a wife; every woman has the political right to vote; but these liberties remain theoretical as long as she does not have economic freedom. A woman supported by a man is not liberated from the male. It is through gainful employment that woman has travelled most of the distance that separated her from the male; and nothing else can guarantee her liberty in practice. I once heard a maidservant declare, while cleaning the stone floor of a hotel lobby, "I never asked anybody for anything; I succeeded all by myself." She was as proud of her self- sufficiency as a Rockefeller, Ford or Birla. However, the mere combination of the right to vote and a job does not mean complete liberation: working, today, is not a liberty. A recent study of women workers in a car factory shows that they would prefer to stay in the home rather than work in the factory. The majority of women do not escape from the traditional feminine world. Their jobs at the factory do not relieve them of housekeeping burdens; they get from neither society nor their husbands, the assistance they need to become concrete fact the equals of men. Why mention the maid in the hotel lobby?