Women in the Workplace

During the nineteen hundreds it was common for women to take on house jobs while the men went to work to support the family. However, the Great Depression was a time in which many people were in need of money and drastic times call for drastic measures. Women began to break the social norms started to take on roles in which men would usually lead. Back then females usually worked as “inn and tavern keepers, laundresses and domestic workers, nursemaids, prostitutes, fish sellers, and merchants, and sometimes even landowners”, but when the Great Depression took effect woman changed those roles and took one jobs that men would usually hold, in order to help support the family financially. However, it took many movements and groups to ban together and earn women the right to hold men’s roles. The Women’s Suffrage Movement helped create a change for women by creating organized self help groups. As a result, the movement was successful in increasing the amount of women found in the workplace, “More than sixteen percent of women could be found in the workplace in 1880. By 1900, that figure had increased to twenty-one percent”. This shows that when women ban together a positive change was formed. While reading about how imbalanced the roles of women and men were I thought about how different times are now. Many women in the twentieth century hold jobs in which men do as well. I believe that times now are more equal than they were back then. Even in other areas, such as athletics, women were not allowed to do the sports that men participated in. Recently at school there was a “Women’s Sports Day” group meeting which discussed how the roles of women changed. Whether it is sports or labor, women have begun to be treated equally.

http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display.aspx?categoryid=23&entryid=263292&searchtext=work&type=simple&option=all
MLA: "women in the workplace." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 29 Jan. 2010. http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com/.