1943 Article: "Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees"

[Paisley]

No problem--you might be interested to see some of the prior comments posted about the article.

 

[Paisley]

Yes, I totally agree. Crazy to think we all have the War to thank for our emancipation!

I think the war just speeded things up. Keep in mind that single women had been homesteading out West for decades and had been making inroads elsewhere as well.

 

[epr25]

I don't want this to sound stupid. But since we are talking about the times back then. How did the black ladies of these times fall into all this? Were most of the working women white? If they were what did all the black families do? Thier men were gone too.

 

[ShortClara]

I am not an authority, but I think I have seen vintage pics of women in factories, and have noticed both black and white ladies there.

 

[Paisley]

On The War (the Ken Burns production), a couple of black women said they moved to Sacramento and found jobs right away. One was a typist who was looking for more opportunity; she was from Kansas and said she'd have probably ended up working in a white woman's kitchen if she'd stayed there. Her job in California paid $65 per week vs. the $24 she was making before.

 

[Lady Day]

I don't want this to sound stupid. But since we are talking about the times back then. How did the black ladies of these times fall into all this? Were most of the working women white? If they were what did all the black families do? Thier men were gone too.

Well from family history, my granny was a nanny/houskeeper to a white family in KY. My Grandpa was a carpenter, too old for the war. Most everything was still segregated (in regions where they enforced it, even the army) so as black men enlisted, their jobs became avaliable. I dont thnk most were filled by black women, I mean it was still white economy. But Im no expert.

LD

 

[LizzieMaine]

Women in the workforce prior to the war years were primarily of the urban working class -- and a goodly number of them, both white and black, worked in domestic service: maids and nannies and cleaning ladies and cooks and launderesses. (Interestingly, the demographers of the late twenties defined "middle class" as households employing at least one servant.)

Working as a domestic could be absolutely back-breaking work, often far more so than the sort of repetitive assembly-line labor required in factory jobs. Farm wives had it even tougher, and were generally expected to pull their share of labor in the fields along with keeping up the house.

In other words. you could argue that the only women who were considered coddled delicate flowers were those whose husbands earned enough money to hire someone to spare the Lady Of The House the responsibility of doing her own housework.

 

[Paisley]

My mother's mother was a farmer's wife who did chores, did the housework, took care of her three kids, and baked pies to sell. She occasionally worked outside the home as well as a cook. She and my grandfather boarded teachers to make more money. Busy woman!

My dad's mother came to Wyoming as a school teacher. She eventually bought her own homestead and continued working as a teacher after she married and had a family. During WWII, they moved to Washington, where she became a welding inspector in a ship yard.

What was housework like in those days? My mother tells me that where she grew up, there was no indoor plumbing--water had to be hauled from a pump and heated on a stove. Clothes were made at home on a sewing machine (in fact, my parents still have grandma's old treadle machine). The clothes were washed on a scrubboard and hung out to dry; my dad's mom made her own soap. Meals were made from scratch. No-wax floors didn't exist unless you could afford tile. There was no second car; they did well to have one car. They used mud as weather stripping and firewood for heat. And for all their hard work, they were poor. Ah, the good old days!

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was even rough if you had electricity and modern appliances -- doing a load of washing in a wringer machine was a genuinely backbreaking task -- fill the tub with hot water, throw in the load and the soap, let it run, pass it thru the wringer, drain the water, refill with rinse water, run the machine, thru the wringer again, drain the water, fill it again, run the machine, thru the wringer and into the basket, drain the machine and wipe it out, and hang the washing on the line. If you were lucky you had a pump to fill and drain the machine, but chances are you didnt -- which meant draining it into buckets and dumping them into the sink. I did this myself for several years, and I had no need for any gym memberships!

 

[Paisley]

I remember when my grandmother had one of those ringers. She did have indoor plumbing, though, so that made it easier. So did the electric iron.

I'm thinking about how hard my grandmothers worked in and out of the home and thinking about that rule that says that women employees don't tend to have much initiative.

 

[Miss 1929]

Me too

I personally would be delighted if my company had an on-call ob-gyn!

Or at least some health care benefits.

 

[Miss 1929]

They went to work too

I don't want this to sound stupid. But since we are talking about the times back then. How did the black ladies of these times fall into all this? Were most of the working women white? If they were what did all the black families do? Thier men were gone too.

I live in Oakland, and there was a lot of ship building and support going on here (it was the main West Coast railhead for goods to get back east and people to get west for the Pacific theater). Many, many black women worked here.

I imagine the white ones got the jobs first, but not all the white women had to go to work, whereas most of the black ones probably did (simple deduction based on wealth averages).

 

[ShortClara]

I'm thinking about how hard my grandmothers worked in and out of the home and thinking about that rule that says that women employees don't tend to have much initiative.

So, so true!! I really do think most men would fall over trying to juggle all that we do. And I'm not even a mom yet!