evidence: WORK IT: Women with Jobs Who are the majority of women workers? Most are from lower income, working-class families. Most are single. But some are married, especially immigrants and African American women. White middle-class women might be stymied by the question of how to have a career AND a marriage, but black women have been doing it out of necessity for centuries. More than 50% of adult black women worked in 1920; 33% of married black women are ladies of business, compared to only 6% of married white women. [...] That all sounds pretty good, right? Right… except these jobs aren’t open to everyone. Because popular culture portrayed clerical jobs as desirable roles for young, educated, white girls, that’s exactly who ends up getting them. Clerical workers need to be literate and numerate, so many businesses require a high school diploma, a college degree, or some sort of commercial school training (like a typing course certificate). These requirements exclude many black and immigrant women. Similarly, although telephone operator is one of the fastest growing positions of the era, (there were over 170,000 female operators by 1920), black women are largely kept out of the industry. Immigrant women are also excluded because many have accents, and operators are expected to have perfect elocution. So, you know, it’s good work, if you can get it.