Essay Series 7.3: Women have always worked.

Throughout history, women have worked and contributed economically to their families.⁵²⁶ They have done so under all sorts of circumstances. Women have worked because they enjoyed it and wanted to accomplish important goals. They have had to support their families when they were single, divorced, or widowed. They have also had to become providers when the men in their lives went bankrupt, lost their jobs, or acquired disabilities.

When women had access to paid work outside the home, they often were very successful financially and grew and managed businesses on their own. However, their wages were almost always lower than men’s for the same or equivalent work.

Women have also been critical to the successes the United States has had during some wars on its own soil and overseas. When the men left to fight, the women took over their jobs or management of farms and businesses. However, society drove women back to the domestic sphere after wars ended.

Prior to writing this essay, I had little understanding of women’s crucial role in the U.S. economy during times of peace and times of war. The remainder of this essay documents this role from the colonial era through World War II in the United States.

1600s and 1700s

Women, particularly in the northern part of colonial America, did a variety of work during the 1600s. In Boston, for example, women were half the innkeepers. Hundreds of women in New Amsterdam (present-day New York City) were traders, real estate entrepreneurs, and merchants when Dutch colonizers controlled the city.⁵²⁷

Some women became prominent business owners. For example, Margaret Brent was an unmarried noblewoman who arrived in present-day Maryland from England in the early 1600s. She received an initial land grant and used her business skills to acquire more land and a profitable mill. She became a lawyer and then represented herself and others in court. Margaret Hardenbroeck came to New Amsterdam as her cousin’s business agent and married a wealthy man. She used his resources to start her own successful businesses. By the time the British took over New Amsterdam, she had married again, and British law gave her property to her husband. However, she continued to run the businesses.⁵²⁸

During the 1700s, women worked in their homes or for pay as spinners. They also were midwives, shopkeepers, innkeepers, bakers, tinworkers, brewers, tanners, rope makers, lumberjacks, printers, morticians, and woodworkers. Over time, men took over women’s roles as healers, and women weren’t allowed to attend the new medical schools.⁵²⁹ If women were widows, they could run their husbands’ businesses or manage their property.⁵³⁰

Regional Variations in Women’s Opportunities during the 1800s

Women’s economic activities varied by region during the 1800s. White women of the South lived in a White men-dominated society where women focused on their homes and farming communities. They had few opportunities to work outside their homes or farms. Enslaved Black women had no choices at all until after the Civil War. Even then, they mostly did domestic or agricultural labor.⁵³¹

Textile factories in the Northeast and then the Mid-Atlantic regions put an end to most of the textile production that women used to do in their homes. The factories created jobs for women and young children who could earn more there than working from home.⁵³² However, factory hours were long, and people labored under dirty, dangerous, and tightly controlled conditions. Girls and women were up to 90 percent of the workers in textile mills and received about half the pay of men.⁵³³ Women in the mills went on strike a number of times to protest these working conditions throughout the 1800s with modest success. Women began to form their own unions in the 1800s, and in 1884 and 1885, some women’s strikes resulted in higher wages and shorter work hours.⁵³⁴

Some women went West, to live as men did with the freedom that gave them. Western women were miners, saloon keepers, homesteaders, and cattle and sheep herders. One of the first mail carriers was Mary Fields, a Black woman. She moved to Montana as a middle-aged woman and delivered the mail when the snow was too deep even for her horses. She retired at 69 from this job and opened a laundry. When it burned down, the townspeople helped her rebuild. The mayor gave Fields permission to go to saloons when other women couldn’t.^535,536

President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862, which gave heads of households, including single women, the ability to claim 160 acres of public land, primarily in the West. Indigenous peoples couldn’t participate because it was their land that the Federal government was giving away.⁵³⁷

Homesteaders had to “improve” their land through farming or other enterprises. Single women were up to 22 percent of homesteaders in some areas. Forty-two percent of women succeeded in improving their homesteads compared to 37 percent of men. Homesteading gave lower- and middle-income-class women one of their first opportunities to own property. The Homestead Act was in effect until 1976 in the lower 48 states.⁵³⁸

In 1848, Mexico lost the Mexican-American War and had to cede much of its territory to the United States, ranging from present-day California to Texas. In these areas, Mexican women had been able to be business owners, farmers, and midwives and didn’t lose their property after marriage. When the United States took over, women were forced to give their property to their husbands. By the 1860s, most Mexican-American women had occupations that were domestic service-related.⁵³⁹

Many women immigrants to the United States worked as servants, housewives, factory workers, and sex workers. For example, most women who emigrated from China arrived in the Western United States.⁵⁴⁰ In the 1800s, these women had jobs such as sewers, launderers, cigar rollers, or sex workers. By the 1880s, most had moved into jobs as domestic or garment workers.⁵⁴¹

Professional Opportunities During the 1800s

During the 1800s, professional opportunities expanded for women in education and programs helping disadvantaged families. By the 1880s, women were about two-thirds of teachers. Social services opened up other opportunities for women who helped poor immigrant and farm workers who came to the cities for jobs. These professional women were mostly social workers, counselors, and nurses. Women became office workers too. These jobs created economic opportunities and independence for middle-income-class women.⁵⁴² In 1870, there were 19,000 women office workers; that number grew to 500,000 by 1900. Another 500,000 women were teachers.⁵⁴³

Early 1900s

The rise of women working outside the home during the 1900s resulted from them getting more education and control over their fertility. Women received less pay than men, so employers had an incentive to hire them.⁵⁴⁴ As a result, by 1920, women represented 30 percent of the workforce. They did factory, office, and domestic work. They were in the professions too, as doctors, nurses, social workers, lawyers, professors, and teachers.⁵⁴⁵

In the early 1900s, working women of the lower-income class experienced harsh working conditions, which included long hours, low pay, lack of ventilation, and other problems. At least 20,000 women factory workers went on strike against their conditions, with the assistance of the Women’s Trade Union League. Some of the League’s members were wealthy women who promised arrested workers bail money and provided assistance with food and rent. Wealthy League members also marched and got arrested with the striking factory workers. The 14-week strike led to workers getting a 52-hour work week, four holidays per year, and bargaining rights for women in some factories. This successful strike sparked others across the country. Even after these successes, poor working conditions persisted. One of the worst examples occurred in 1911, when a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City killed 146 workers who were mostly young women. They died because the owners kept the factory doors locked.⁵⁴⁶

Black women who worked did so in a range of jobs in the early 1900s. Most of them did domestic or agricultural work. Black women were in the professions too, but sexism and racism made their progress more difficult than White women’s. Black women were also entrepreneurs. One of the most successful was Madam C.J. Walker, who marketed a line of beauty products in the early 1900s. Her business skills resulted in her becoming a multimillionaire. She hired thousands of Black women workers to sell her products.⁵⁴⁷

World War I

World War I opened up new jobs for women as men went off to war. Women ran banks, worked in factories, farms, and transportation, and were mechanics, among other jobs. The farm work that women did saved the country’s food supply. Much of their work occurred under the federal Women’s Land Army program. Women also enlisted in the armed services and got jobs that had only been open to men. While in the armed services, women’s pay generally was equivalent to that of men.⁵⁴⁸

Black women were able to do more than domestic work during the War. Among the jobs they had were streetcar conductors and elevator operators. White women were paid less than men, and Black women were paid less than White women.⁵⁴⁹

When men returned from the War, they quickly took their jobs back. And women’s roles in the armed forces ended.⁵⁵⁰

The Great Depression

When the Depression began in 1929, women made up 24 percent of the paid workforce. When it ended, 25 percent were women. This workforce was largely in traditional women’s jobs like teaching, nursing, social work, or domestic service.⁵⁵¹ As the Depression deepened, professional women were expected to give up their careers in favor of men who, in theory, were the only ones who had families to support.⁵⁵² During the Depression, women who worked in the helping professions experienced wage cuts.⁵⁵³ Lower-income-class women sometimes found it easier to find jobs because they received much lower wages than men.⁵⁵⁴

Women activists fought against the economic stresses women were experiencing. For example, in 1930, Fannie Peck, wife of a prominent minister and civil rights leader in Detroit, started a boycott of businesses that didn’t hire Black employees or that charged Black people very high prices. Within five years, Peck’s Housewives League had over 10,000 members. Just one of their actions involved thousands of members protesting high prices by marching through the meatpacking industry and shutting it down.⁵⁵⁵

Another example is Eleanor Roosevelt, who was one of the most famous and powerful activists during the Depression. She educated her husband, President Franklin Roosevelt, about the experiences of poor immigrants who lived in overcrowded tenements, led workers who marched on Washington, and encouraged Franklin to appoint women to leadership in his administrations. One of his appointees was Frances Perkins, who became Secretary of Labor. She was the first woman cabinet member in the United States. She was instrumental in advocating for and implementing the federal Social Security program during the 1930s.^{556 557}

World War II

Once the United States entered World War II, at least 11 million men left their jobs to join the military, and about 250,000 women joined the armed forces. Employers needed women and started recruiting them through positive stories in magazines and other media. Some employers also provided day care centers for their children.⁵⁵⁸

These efforts worked. During World War II, women took over many of the jobs men had left. By the end of the war, about one-third of women were doing paid work.⁵⁵⁹ Between 1940 and 1945, the women’s labor force increased by 50 percent.⁵⁶⁰ About 6 million women entered the paid workforce during the war; 1.5 million of them were aged 45-64. And 250,000 were aged 65 or over.⁵⁶¹ By 1944, women held one-third of manufacturing jobs.⁵⁶² About 1.5 million women joined the Women’s Land Army to help keep farms going in the absence of men.⁵⁶³

Women had higher pay, more interesting jobs, and occupational mobility.⁵⁶⁴ The federal government said that if women did men’s work, they would get pay equivalent to that of men.⁵⁶⁵ Seventy-five percent of new workers were married, and a majority had school-age children. Some women who worked in the defense industry had subsidized child care; this was provided to help recruit women.⁵⁶⁶

During the War, Black, Latina, and Chinese-American women had jobs similar to those of White women, which enabled some of them to get out of the primarily domestic service work they had been doing. During World War II, 600,000 Black women left jobs as domestic workers and sharecroppers to work in industries building ships, airplanes, and tanks.⁵⁶⁷ Indigenous women were encouraged to leave the reservations to go to work in the defense industry or to join the military because, the thinking was, this would encourage them to leave behind their tribal ways.⁵⁶⁸

After the War ended in 1945, up to four million women left the workforce to make room for returning men.⁵⁶⁹ Polls in 1944 showed that 75 to 80 percent of the women wanted to keep their jobs.⁵⁷⁰ White women who worked after the War did clerical jobs or low-skilled manufacturing jobs.⁵⁷¹ Black women went back to domestic and farm work. Women who did have jobs in the post-war era took steep pay cuts.⁵⁷²

Reflections

Women and children worked under harsh conditions for long hours with low pay during the 1800s and early 1900s. They didn’t start getting relief until the 1900s, and much of this progress was hard-fought through strikes and other labor union activities. Wealthy women helped working women in these efforts; this is an important form of solidarity that could benefit us today.

During both World Wars, women successfully took over traditional men’s work. Society forced women back into lower-paying jobs or no jobs after both wars.

Doing the research for this essay made me realize that women have always stood up, taken advantage of economic opportunities, and taken care of themselves and their families. The independence and grit of Western women are particularly impressive. They gave up comforts for the unknown and showed as much bravery as any man. And they were the more successful homesteaders.

Growing up, I learned the false narrative that men were the primary heroes during wars and that women prayed for their safe return. I wish I had known that women’s heroism was part of my heritage.

What does the history of working women tell you about their drive and capabilities?