Is Equality Inevitable?

From Maria Montessori: A Biography by Rita Kramer

"Feminism would triumph, she insisted, not as a result of propaganda, not because of lectures or newspaper articles, but because it was a social inevitability. As mechanical progress diminished the work of the housewife, as the new inventions left more of her time and energy free, she would begin to participate in the new movement spreading through every class, first in the towns and industrial centers, eventually in the farmhouses and fields. She talked about the women's study groups that were being formed in Rome, in Milan, and predicted that 'the movement itself will disappear when it has succeeded in persuading men that women can and should do more with their lives than what they are allowed to do today. Eventually the woman of the future will have equal rights as well as equal duties.'"

Montessori was convinced that sexism, classism,and bigotry ofall forms were based upon factual errors inherent in widely held socialbeliefs. Science, she thought, would overturn these fallacies and social justice would necessarily advance in tandem with our understanding of the natural world. So are efforts needed to keep moving moral rightness forward or just to speed it up? Does the moral arc of the universe bend towards justice or do we need to do all the bending?