Married women and single women wanted to work together but people did not let them. Women in the 1930s were expected to do housework and could not find jobs easily outside of the home, but women organized into volunteers groups devoted to improving the living and working conditions of other women. Women were having a hard time getting a job. Women worked long hours for low wages in the 1930s. The depression caused wages to drop lower so more women can join and not meet the basic expenses (Working Women in the 1930s).
Women in the early 1900’s didn’t have very much economic freedom. They were restricted on almost everything they did. They weren’t allowed in the workplace like their partners were so for women to make it, they had to be married. Now, however, women have economic equality with their partners. This can lead to a variety of failed marriages with both partners trying to reach success.
….We worked twelve hours a day for fifty cents. When paydays come around, I drawed three dollars. That was for six days, seventy-two hours. I remember I lacked fifty cents having enough to pay my board. “ this is a excerpt from one of the girls working in the factory explains its a privilege that she got a job but it also shows that even through all that hard work, she still does not have enough money to support herself also shows that instead of receiving an
They were not able to enjoy the luxury that was staying home to look after their kids or husband. Another type of women who worked would be those that would work for a few years before they got married and had children. Thus, working was no foreign subject for women by 1940’s. However, working women was not a particularly popular topic as it was seen as inglorious and undignified. This was especially so during the period of the Great Depression, where many women were frowned upon if they worked as they were seen as stealing the already limited work available from men who were assumed as more capable than women (“A Change in Gender Roles: Women’s Impact during WWII in the Workforce and Military (Fall 2012)”, 2012).
In Dadi’s family, Dadi supports this claim as she describes being a woman as being an inferior caste. Being a woman includes being submissive and being able to work hard in a household for the family, as Dadi also expresses. Dadi sheds light on her experience when she was once a new daughter in-law. Women were to cover their face from father in laws and brother in laws as to show respect to the men. Dadi also expresses that as a new bride there were no rights for women, except though the men.
For my creative task I’ve chosen to write a diary entry piece, where a middle-class woman Catherine feels pity for her young lower-class housemaid and also has feelings towards her as she would for a man, thus spawning a debate in herself wheter to succumb to those feelings or keep herself on a pious path. At the time in England, during the industrial revolution, young lower-class women were hired by the wealthy women as babysitters or housemaids and they could work up to 12 hours a day which resulted in spending much time at the presence of her employer who also stayed home much of the time. The previous often developed a friendship or a trust between those women which I got inspiration from. Also, at the time homosexuality was frowned upon thus ruling out all those types of feelings and relationships, escpecially in the higher-classes who were firm on the strict moral code and prudent values. I tried to mimic a Victorian high-class woman and to make those diary entrys as authentic as possible taking into account the literary works published and writers thoughts at the time, for example Charles Darvin and R.L.Stevenson.
Social, intellectual, and economic restrictions of the late nineteenth century left women without sovereignty. Women typically suffered under the rule of fathers and brothers before marriage and in subservience to their husbands after marriage. Women had few property rights, no voting rights, and no educational rights. Women essentially remained children throughout their lives. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” center around two such women.
These suggestions, however, are her only options in her society, and she realizes this. Another example happens when Lawrence describes and explains Mabel’s past. He explains that for the past decade Mabel had kept the house after her mother’s death (Lawrence 458). This is another example of man vs. society conflict that reveals that women were expected to take care of the house duties. Instead of balancing the duties to keep up the house between all the siblings or even leaving them to one of the older brothers, Mabel is expected and does take up this responsibility despite her young age at the time.
There is still clear discrimination going on in the workplace towards women today; two of these issues being the gender pay gap and sexual harassment. Women get paid less than men based on their personal life, gender, age, race, and level of education. According to statistics women earn only 80% of what men earn, a pay gap of 20% (Miller). For instance, hispanic/latina women get paid only 54% of what white men earn and african american women get paid 63% of what white men earn. Second, when women have kids their employers assume they will work less so they pay them less.
She spent most of her days doing housework because that’s what women were only worthy enough to do during the Great Depression, so to speak. This “life at home” job was expected for every woman out there. Census reports at the time show that three in ten working women were in domestic or personal service roles, such as cooks and maids (Beach). It was thought of as stealing if women took men’s jobs. They would take the place of men and leave men unemployed.