Title: Underpaid, But Employed: How the Great Depression Affected Working Women - HISTORY
Headings: Underpaid, But Employed: How the Great Depression Affected Working Women
Underpaid, But Employed: How the Great Depression Affected Working Women
‘Women’s Work’ During the Great Depression
Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins
Discrimination Against Women
Mexican-American Women and the Great Depression
Black Women and the Great Depression
Rosie The Riveter
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Content: Jessica Pearce Rotondi
Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images
More women entered the work force during the economically tough era, but the jobs they took were relegated as "women's work" and poorly paid. During the Great Depression, millions of Americans lost their jobs in the wake of the 1929 Stock Market Crash. But for one group of people, employment rates actually went up: women. From 1930 to 1940, the number of employed women in the United States rose 24 percent from 10.5 million to 13 million. The main reason for women’s higher employment rates was the fact that the jobs available to women—so called “women’s work”— were in industries that were less impacted by the stock market. “Some of the hardest-hit industries like coal mining and manufacturing were where men predominated,” says Susan Ware, historian and author of Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s. “ Women were more insulated from job loss because they were employed in more stable industries like domestic service, teaching and clerical work.” pinterest-pin-it
A large group of women working on sewing machines, circa 1937.