Title: Women in the 1930s & 1940s: HIST18.2: History of Women in the United States Since 1877: Section 0972: Donegan A
Headings: Women in the 1930s & 1940s
Women in the 1930s & 1940s
1930s
Working Women
Poor Working Conditions
Work and the Married Woman
Difficulty Getting Relief Jobs
Single Women
Feminism

Content: According to the 1930 census almost eleven million women, or 24.3 percent of all women in the country, were gainfully employed. Three out of every ten of these working women were in domestic or personal service. Of professional women three-quarters were schoolteachers or nurses. The 1940 census did not post dramatic changes in the numbers of working women: thirteen million women, or 25.4 percent of all women over the age of fourteen, worked. The greatest numbers of women continued to work in domestic service, with clerical workers just behind. Out of every ten women workers in 1940, three were in clerical or sales work, two were in factories, two in domestic service, one was a professional—a teacher or a nurse—and one was a service worker. Women in the 1930s in fact entered the workforce at a rate twice that of men—primarily because employers were willing to hire them at reduced wages. In unionized industries, however, women fared better. Women constituted 7 percent of all workers in the automobile industry and 25 percent of all workers in the electrical industry.