Now , as a matter of fact , there are not so many jobs which normal and ordinary people can pursue with enthusiasm for their own sakes . The position is generally falsified by quoting the exceptional cases of specialists who achieve success . There may be a woman who is so very fond of swimming the Channel that she can go on doing it until she breaks a record . There may be , for that matter , a woman who is so fond of discovering the North Pole that she goes on doing it long after it has been discovered . Such sensational successes naturally bulk big in the n e w s p a p e r s m a k e b e l i e v e w i t h r e a l i t y w h y feministsobsessoverbarbie , because they are sensational cases . But they are not the question of whether women are more free in professional or domestic life . To answer that question , we must assume all the sailors on the Channel boats to be women , all the fishermen in the herring fleet to be women , all the whalers in the North Sea to be women , and then consider whether the worst paid and hardest worked of all those workers were really having a happier or a harder life . It will be at once apparent that the vast majority of them must be under orders and that perhaps a considerable minority of them would be under orders which they did not entirely understand . There could not be a community in which the average woman was in command of a ship . But there can be a community in which the average woman is in command of a house . G . K . C h e s t e r t o n i n t h e w o r k p l a ceandathomebygkchesterton