Title: Women’s Rights in the 1930s in the United States
Headings: The 1930s: Women’s Shifting Rights and Roles in United States
The 1930s: Women’s Shifting Rights and Roles in United States
The social impact of the Great Depression on American women
Context: Women's Roles in 1900–1929
1930s—The Great Depression
The New Deal
Women in Government and the Workplace

Content: With fewer jobs available, employers generally preferred to award those they had to men who'd traditionally worn the mantle of the family breadwinner. As fewer and fewer women were able to find employment, the societal ideals that had embraced increasing female freedoms did an about-face. Domesticity, motherhood, and homemaking once again became regarded as the only truly proper and fulfilling roles for women. But some women still needed to work, and work they did. While the economy was losing some jobs, in newer fields, such as the radio and telephone industries, job opportunities for women were actually expanding. One of the main reasons women were hired for many of these new jobs that resulted from emerging technology was that they could be paid considerably less than men (and often still are). Again, the wage gap was justified by the stereotype of the male breadwinner needing earnings that would support not just himself, but a traditional family—whether he was married or not. Another place where women were thriving in the workplace was the growing film industry whose ranks included many powerful female stars. Ironically, even as many female stars hauled in hefty salaries and outearned their male co-stars, the majority of 1930s film fare consisted of movies aimed at selling the idea that a woman’s place was in the home. Even those onscreen characters who were strong, charismatic career women usually gave it all up for the love, marriage, and the husband that were requisite for a traditional Hollywood happy ending—or were punished for not doing so.