The American woman : her changing role worker, homemaker, citizen / Women's Bureau ; United States Department of Labor.

Date:
1948
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The American woman : her changing role worker, homemaker, citizen / Women's Bureau ; United States Department of Labor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the special situation of the war years, women’s place in the labor market has expanded more than it did in the 10 years between 1930 and 1940. This figure of 17 million women in the labor force has a many-sided significance. In size alone, itis impressive. But it has an even greater significance as an index to the present nature of our society and the change that society has undergone in the past century. The Secretary has reminded you that when Harriet Martineau came to this country in 1886, only 12 years before the occasion we are celebrating here this week, she found women employed in only seven occupations, and those were mainly humble ones. We have only fragmentary statistics about their work at that time. Indeed it was not until the Census of 1870, after the close of the Civil War, that official notice was given to the many occupations women had undertaken in the Nation’s economic life. Only in that year, when 2 million women were recorded as being in gainful work, did the Census of Population begin to show employment figures by sex. One might almost say that the year 1870 was a mile- stone in achievement for the women of Seneca Falls because, as we are all so frequently reminded, government moves slowly and cautiously in recognizing the facts of hfe. Its recognition, in 1870, through so staid a Bureau as the Census, of the importance of women as paid workers, was indeed an index to the revolutionary change in women’s status that began in the early 19th century and has continued to this very hour. The fascinating story of women’s growing participation in paid work outside the home, and the constant expansion of the kinds of work women do, is told in the figures of the 10-year Censuses that have been issued since 1870. ‘Those figures, embalmed in massive volumes with the odor of age upon them, are really full of excitement and tales of great deeds in the battle of women to achieve equality and their full place in American society. The Women’s Bureau now has in press, and we expect it to be available this spring, an intensive analysis of the development of women’s employment—their growing numbers, their expanding occupations, the later age at which they start to work, and their growing practice of continuing work after marriage. The figures tell us that there are over 8 times as many women workers today as there were 80 years ago. In the last 30 years of the 19th century women’s entry into paid employment kept on apace. In 1900 they numbered 5 million or 18 percent of the total. Since the turn of the century this number has more than tripled, while the number of men is some 21% million less than double its 1900 figure. This points up another striking change, that while the entire labor force has some- what more than doubled since 1900, the women in it have tripled and are now 28 percent of the total, rather than 18 percent. 1]