Note from Florence Nightingale

" I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear  of both the jargons now current everywhere 

(for they are equally jargons) ; of the jargon, namely, about the ''rights'' of women, which urges women to do all that men do, including the medical  and other professions, merely because the men do it, and without regard to whether this is the the best that women can do;and of the jargon  that urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women, and should be ''recalled to a sense of their duty as women'' and because ''this is women's work'',  and ''that is men's'' and ''these are the things which women should not do'' which is all assertion and nothing more. Surely woman should bring the best that she has, whatever that is to the work of God's world, without attending to either of these cries. for what are they, both of them, the one just as much as the other, but the listening to the ''what people will say'', to opinion, to the ''voices  from without?'' And as a wise man has said, no one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the voices from without. You do not want the effect of your good things to be ''How wonderful for a woman!'' nor would you be deterred from good things , by hearing it said ''yes, but she ought not to have done this, because it is not suitable for a woman.''

But you want to do the thing that is good  whether it is ''suitable for a woman'' or not.It does not make a thing good, that it is remarkable  that a woman should have been able to do it. Neither does it make a thing bad, which would have been good had a man done it, that it has been done by a woman.

Oh, leave these jargons, and go your way straight to God's work, in simplicity and singleness of heart."

-Florence Nightingale