​The lives of women during the Depression varied drastically depending on such factors as location, ethnicity, family background, and education. Women in the workplace is a particularly interesting subject given that jobs for women diverged greatly during the Depression. Some women were white-collar office workers and teachers, while others were blue-collar farmers and factory workers. Some middle-class women made a decent wage — at least more than many of their out-of-work male counterparts — working as secretaries and typists, while other women were denied a fair wage, working in factories for considerably less than their male counterparts. Some women found it nearly impossible to get work — regulations in many states prevented married or second-income women from getting jobs — while others found that they could gain employment much easier than their husbands, brothers, and fathers. These disparate experiences illustrate a clear divide in the lives of American women during the Depression.

​​

The Blue-Collar Woman

​

Women who possessed little to no formal education primarily worked on farms or in manufacturing, particularly in the South. Many factory jobs went to women during the Depression because women were viewed as a “tractable work force with nimble fingers” (Hapke 146). They would work longer hours for lower pay and were less likely to take their concerns to management. Additionally, women who worked in mills, were valuable workers because they often had children with them, who could then be used for cheap labor as well. Lots of male mill workers in North Carolina lost their jobs to women and children during the Depression (Price Davis).

Mill Villages and the Female Mill Worker in North Carolina

 

Textiles comprised one of North Carolina’s leading industries in the early 20th century. (The other major industries were tobacco and lumber/wooden furniture.)  In North Carolina, women who worked in textile mills constituted over 60% of the entire female workforce (Hapke). Contradictory to the popular sentiment that women should not work, mill owners began recruiting women, and building mill villages to house that growing workforce, in the late 1800s.

​

Mill villages were communal neighborhoods run by paternalistic mill owners. Workers lived together in the villages, which typically had communal dining facilities, churches, and schools. Most mill villages were not desirable places to live as the quarters were typically not well-constructed or insulated and did not have electricity (Price Davis). Many living quarters did not even have running water or indoor toilets. What’s more, workers were often forced to pay high rents and buy their goods from the mill store, where prices were dictated by the mill owners. Room rental in N.C. mill villages ranged from $.25 per month to an outrageous $.50 per week! These costs were often difficult to shoulder on the average mill worker’s salary of $9 per week (Price Davis 162).

The Gastonia, N.C. Mill Strike of 1929

​

On April 1, 1929, about 1800 of 2000 workers at Loray Mill in Gastonia, N.C. went on strike. The Manville-Jenckes Company, proprietary of the mill, implemented a number of wage reductions and increases in production quotas that ignited the workforce — both men and women. Women workers involved in the strike also protested substandard working conditions, child labor, and the mandatory night shifts that kept them from their families (Hapke). In negotiations, the strikers asked for $20 per week salaries, equal pay for women and children, various improvements to living conditions, and union recognition. ​

​

Unfortunately, the strikers' demands were implausible, and the strike was, on the whole, unsuccessful as the state militia was called in, and strike numbers dwindled to less than 200 by the end of April. The strike eventually ended with the gunshot deaths of a police chief in June and a woman strike leader, Ella Mae Wiggins, in September. Loray Mills ended up evicting 62 families following the strike (Price Davis). Although the Gastonia strike was unsuccessful, it inspired mass labor strikes in other mill communities in the early-to-mid 1930s, which lead to the rapid unionization of the industry.

​

*Average N.C. Female Mill Worker’s Salary: $9/week 
*Average N.C. Female Office Worker’s Salary: $22/week

 

The White-Collar Woman

​

High school or college-educated women constituted just under 15% of the 11 million women workers in the U.S. during the 1930s (Hapke 183). These women primarily worked as teachers, nurses, secretaries, physicians, and even lawyers; though teaching and nursing were by far the most popular professions for educated women in the 1930s (Nash and Romero). Unlike their sisters on the farms and in factories, white-collar women received competitive wages, experienced good working conditions, and were not typically subjected to the notion that working detracted from one’s femininity. 

 

Curiously, many news jobs created in the 1930s, including clerical jobs like stenography and telephone switchboard operation, were considered women’s work, and thereby afforded more jobs to women than men (Kennedy 164). As a result, more women became primary wage earners for their families, displacing their husbands, in many regards, as bosses of the household. Although working wives and mothers became a necessity to survival during the Depression, it was not entirely socially acceptable. Many business publications and women’s magazines of the time continued to discourage women’s interest in a career outside of the home (Hapke 183), and many local and state governments banned married women from certain jobs. This sentiment is also reflected in the popular literature of the time. See, for instance the novels of Faith Baldwin.

​

​

Week-End Marriage by Faith Baldwin

​

In this popular 1932 novel the protagonist, Lola, has a secretarial job

that pays a whopping $40/week, while her husband Ken, a mechanic,

takes pay cuts and eventually loses his job. Lola’s job provides the

family with much needed income, but it negatively affects her

marriage by making Ken feel inadequate and emasculated. Not

only does Baldwin’s novel demonstrate the incongruity of the job

market for men and women, but it also reinforces popular attitudes

that a working wife undermines her husband’s authority and drives

her marriage to failure.

​

​

Teaching During the Depression

 

Teaching was a common career choice among middle-class women in the 1930s. During the Depression teachers suffered heavy pay cuts — like virtually every other profession — but minimal job losses (Kennedy 164). The city of Chicago, for instance, was reduced to paying teachers in tax warrants in 1931; and by the winter of 1932-1933, the city couldn’t pay them anything at all (Kennedy 163). Although most teachers technically kept their jobs, in a more realistic regard, they lost their jobs. School districts all over the United States could not afford to pay their teachers' salaries.

 

Upon leaving the Appalachian State Teachers College (ASTC) in 1935, Jane Logan became an elementary school teacher in the Cherryville school district in North Carolina. She would have been extremely lucky to have this job given that many more experienced teachers found themselves out of work for most of the mid-thirties. Although there were many teaching, nursing, and clerical jobs available for educated women during the Depression, it by no means guaranteed employment or a decent wage. In fact, by 1934 it took the average white female college graduate over a year to find work (Hapke 184). In North Carolina, many counties did not require four-year college degrees for teachers, asking instead for two years of college and a passing score on a certification test administered by the superintendent. Perhaps the reduced college requirement for teachers contributed to Jane's career choice. Her family only had to pay two years of college tuition, as opposed to the four years of tuition required for other majors. Many of Jane's friends — in particular her male friends, including her future husband Red Lackey — stayed at the ASTC for the full four years, while Jane left to start earning a living. Following her marriage to Red in 1938, however, Jane left her job with Cherryville to become a stay-at-home wife and mother.   

 

In many ways the Depression-era’s call to return to the traditional family unit, wherein the man worked and the woman stayed at home, undid some of the liberalization women experienced in the 1920s. Although many new jobs were created for women (e.g., stenography and switchboard operations), the percentage of all American women in the professions decreased from 14.2 in 1930 to 12.3 by 1940 (Hapke 184). Deans of many women’s colleges encouraged graduates not to seek employment (and perhaps seek a working husband instead) at the behest of Labor Secretary Francis Perkins (Hapke). (Ironically, Perkins was the first female ever to be appointed to the U.S. cabinet.) Even first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who worked hard to bring relief funds to women, believed that women should focus on homemaking and child-rearing as a primary profession. The relief work most commonly suggested for women was sewing (Hapke).

​

For those women fortunate enough to attend college, fields like teaching and home economics were among the few curriculums offered to them. Home economics departments offering courses in child development, hygiene, social work, household management, textiles, and department store purchasing, afforded women more opportunities in higher education, while at the same time constraining them to a rigid, pervasive view of what was appropriate for women (Nash and Romero).