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STATE COLLEGE LIBRARY

mim

Conference

THE AMERICAN WOMAN
HER CHANGING ROLE
WORKER • HOMEMAKER • CITIZEN

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
WOMEN’S BUREAU BULLETIN NO. 224

REPORT

ON 1948

Women’s Bureau
Conference
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
February 17, 18, 19

THE AMERICAN WOMAN • Her Changing Role
WORKER
HOMEMAKER
CITIZEN

UNITED

STATES

WASHINGTON, D. C.

DEPARTMENT

LABOR

C A PINIONS expressed by speakers, delegates, and guests at the Con
ference on the American Woman were not necessarily those
of the Women’s Bureau or of the Department of Labor. Speakers
gave their own views. The conference provided for a free inter
change of ideas in the American democratic tradition.

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
United States Department of Labor,
Women’s Bureau,

Washington, April l.f. 194-8.

Sir: I have the honor of transmitting a report on the Women’s
Bureau Conference, The American Woman, Her Changing BoleWorker, Homemaker, Citizen, held on February 17, 18, and 19, 1948,
in Washington, D. C. The Conference was participated in by women
representing 70 women’s organizations, civic and professional groups,
and labor unions; by women administering State labor laws; and by
women from management groups. The report is being published be
cause of the wide need for the information presented at the Conference.
Kespectfully submitted.
Frieda S. Milter,
Director.
Hon. L. B. SCHWELLENBAOH,
Secretary of Labor.

Ill

CONTENTS
Page

Welcome.......................

Part ]
.

CONFERENCE ADDRESSES
February 17 Morning Session
The President of the United States............................
Opening Address, L. B. Scliwellenbach, Secretary of
Labor................................................................................
Who Works, Where, and Why, Frieda S. Miller, Direc
tor, Women’s Bureau.....................................................

February 17 Afternoon Session:

American

women on

4
10

the

JOB

Gains and Goals of Women Workers, Gladys Dickason
The Role of Women’s Legislation in Meeting Basic
Problems of Working Conditions, Elizabeth S.
Magee. .............................................................................
Comentary, Irma Rittenhouse ...............................................

19
28
33

February 17 Evening Session
Presiding, John W. Gibson, Assistant Secretary of
Labor...............................................................................

Centennial of the Woman’s Movement, Hon. William
H. Stevenson, United States Congress...............................
Women’s Status—Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow,
C. Mildred Thompson.....................................................
The Idea Takes Root, Lisa Sergio.........................................

February 18 Morning Session:

working

women:

37
37
42
52

their

home obligations

Family Responsibilities of Earning Women, Hazel
Kyrlt....................................................................................
Social Patterns for Women, the Present and the
Prospects, Ordway Tead..................................................

59
69
V

February [19 Morning Session: working

WOMEN,

THEIR

CITIZENSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES
Rage

Shifting Status of Women: Panel Discussion
Harrison Smith, Moderator........................................
Mrs. Harold Stone........................................................
Maida Springer................................................................
Elisabeth Christman....................................................
Minerva Bernardino........................................................
Mildred Fairchild........................................................\
Dorothy Kenyon............................................................
Harrison Smith................................................................

79
81
84
86
88
90
93
97

February 19 Afternoon Session: conference summary
w

Summary of February 17 Morning Session, Thelma
Mills....................................................................................
Summary of February 17 Afternoon Session—
American Women on the Job, Bess Bloodworth . . .
Summary of February 17 Evening Session, Dollie
Lowther................................................................................
Summary of February 18 Morning Session—Working
Women: Their Home Obligations, M. Eunice Hilton.
Summary of February 19 Morning Session—Working
Women: Their Citizenship Responsibilities, Olya
Margolin................................................................................
Concluding Address, David Morse, Undersecretary of
Labor....................................................................................

99
103
105
108

Ill
114

Part II
Conference Keynotes
The Social Patterns Which Relate to Women as Workers,
Homemakers, Citizens........................................................
Women as Workers...............................................
Women in Unions................................................................
Legislative and Other Standards.........................................
Women as Homemakers........................................................
Women as Citizens................................................................
Cooperation Between Men and Women is Requisite to
the Solution of Social and Economic Problems ....
Challenges to the Conference................................................
Individual Women Who Have Advanced the Welfare and
Status of Women....................................................................
VI

^
119
126
138
143
152
162
170
174
179

Page
Appendices

Appendix
Appendix

I. Conference Attendence............................
II. Charts to Accompany “Who Works,
Where, and Why”...............................
Appendix III. Summary of State Labor Laws for Women,
to Accompany “The Role of Women’s
Legislation in Meeting Basic Problems
of Working Conditions”.......................
Appendix IV. Charts to Accompany “Family Responsi
bilities of Earning Women”...............

191
195

200
206

«k

VII

WELCOME
N OPENING this conference on the American Woman, Her Chang
ing Role as Worker, Homemaker, Citizen, I need hardly dwell on
the warmth of our welcome to you all. The President of the United
States and the Secretary of Labor by their very presence here make
that abundantly clear.
To their greeting, however, I want to add my own personal welcome
and that of the whole of the Women’s Bureau staff, which looks to
women like yourselves for inspiration in carrying forward its wrnrk
and in sticking to the job when the going gets rough.
It was this interest and indeed the repeated requests of some of you
' that inspired this meeting in the first place. From your response to
the plans that grew out of this stimulus I take it for granted that you
are still of the same opinion as last summer when the officers of about
a dozen women’s organizations with headquarters here in Washington
first discussed with me the general plan.
Now, at the beginning of 1948, the plan has become this great gather
ing. It is the moment for us to pause, to review, to reappraise our
plans and prospects in a situation that we jointly agreed is important.
You will be interested to know who has come to this conference,
whom you together represent, where you come from. In your kits is
a detailed list of persons in attendance and their affiliations. But I
think it would help if I should summarize for you the composition of
the group. There are among you people from 25 States, from the
District of Columbia, and several foreign countries. Women’s and
civic organizations are represented by 102 of you, and labor unions by
36. Women’s labor law administrators number 19, management representatives, 9. There are also 10 working members of the press and
radio, and in addition about 45 individuals whose major activities are
in the field with which this conference will deal.
We of the Women’s Bureau staff know from long experience that
it is you and the organizations that you represent who give real im
port to the basic data which the Bureau collects about women’s em
ployment, working conditions, and earnings, their opportunities for
training and advancement, and the laws affecting their civil and
political status. Such information takes on its value as it is in
terpreted in action by civic groups, by employers, by the great variety
of organizations represented here who are able to make it mean some
real advance for their own members and for other women.

"
|

»
.

We know full well, too, the valuable work done by those of you who
administer women’s labor laws in maintaining and improving the
legal standards governing women’s employment, and the fine work of
the trade union women who have pioneered in seeking understanding
and support for the millions of workers less well equipped to cope
with their economic problems. We are grateful, too, to have here
representatives of education, of the press and radio, who in addition to
their individual contributions in their own fields keep driving the
rest of us to more and more thought and effort and laborious output.
To all of you I say, you are more than welcome. You are thrice
welcome. And now, I am proud and happy to turn over the formal
opening of this conference on the American Woman in 1948 to the
Secretary of Labor.
Frieda S. Miller,

Director, Women's Bwreau.

, <<]

L. B. Schwellenbach, The President of the United States, Frieda S. Miller.

w OMEN’S

BUREAU

CONFERENCE

Part 1

February 17 Morning Session
CONFERENCE ADDRESSES

The President of the United States
Opening Address, L. B. Schwellenbacb, Secretary of Labor
Who Works, Where, and Why, Frieda S. Miller, Director, Women’s Bureau

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Introduced by The Secretary of Labor, L. B. Schwellenbach
Secretary, Miss Miller, and members of the Women’s Bureau
Conference, it is certainly a pleasure for me to be over here this
morning.
When Miss Miller opened her remarks she started off by saying
that you represented workers, homemakers, citizens. I want to re
verse that order. I want to say “homemakers, workers, citizens,” for
if it were not for the homemakers we would have neither the citizens
nor the workers.
Not often is there a meeting in Washington of a body of women as
widely representative in their interests as the group gathered here
today. The occasion is an especially happy one for me because it per
mits me to speak of some of the things that are close to my heart and
that I know are close to yours as well.
r.

First, let me say how delighted I was to learn that the Department
of Labor was planning this Conference of women leaders to commem
orate the 100th Anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, where the
movement for women’s rights and women’s social freedom was
launched. I feel that I am among friends of the most valued kind—
those whose hearts and minds are devoted to making this country
a better place to live in, for all our people. This is the true patriotism.
I am proud that under my administration women are serving in a
number of positions of influence in international affairs. The speaker
who will address you this evening, Dean C. Mildred Thompson of
Vassar College, was twice Governmental delegate to the United Na
tions Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO.
Miss Dorothy Kenyon, a member of your Thursday morning panel, is
the United States member on the United Nations Commission on the
Status of Women. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt heads the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights. Mrs. Roosevelt has made a
wonderful contribution to the welfare of this Nation since the Presi
dent died. (He is the only President I ever think of as “the
President.”)
These outstanding women are your ambassadors to the international
world; they are there because of the long, hard, devoted work of women
like yourselves and those you represent. You women come from many
walks of life; you have varying backgrounds and interests. But you
have joined together—and this is the great contribution you are mak
ing in giving form and substance to the social, political, and economic
aspirations of our country.
You are all bringing your talents and experience to serve a common
purpose—to carry out a program in which you could join together,
sinking minor differences because of your vital common objectives.
There should be monuments to the successes that have crowned these
common efforts during the hundred years you are celebrating—suc
cesses like women’s suffrage, social legislation, greater economic oppor
tunities for women, the opening up of higher education to women, the
successful battle for civil and political rights. We are working for
those very same things for a large number of our population.
You have still before you many unfinished tasks. Not all of them
can or need be enumerated here. You have been studying them and
seeking remedies that will increase the dignity and usefulness of women
in our society. These things cannot be accomplished all at once, or
all by the same means. Some of them are now before the Congress, like
equal pay for equal work, and the ending of specific discriminations
against women, such as limitations on the right to serve on Federal
juries. It is within your strength to accomplish these things in which
you believe, but only if you make your goals known and persist in de
2

manding action. And there is not a single man in the Government
who can resist you if you really want to do something.
Women’s organizations have at hand a ready weapon which they
have not yet used to its full capacity—the power of the consumer. It
has been said over and over again that women control the bulk of the
Nation’s wealth; they certainly channel its day-to-day spending for
food, for clothing, for education, for all the things that make for better
living. This is a weapon which you can use together to combat one
of the enemies that now threaten us—the high cost of living. And I
think you are having some effect on it right now;
Women have learned the arts of peace. They have discovered ways
of making peace exciting and full of challenge. They know, better
than men, that the war against poverty and fear and disease and hunger
is the war to which we can, as yet, see no end. Even in the United
States, where the standard of living is higher than anywhere else in
the world, much remains to be done.
It is your special responsibility to carry on this fight, to persuade
the men to support you in it, so that the United States can push on
toward the goal of a better life for all our people.
In this task I wish you all Godspeed.

OPENING ADDRESS
L. B. Schwellenbach, Secretary of Labor

Miss Miller, members of the conference, and members of the staff
of the Labor Department.
It is a matter of particular pride to me to extend to this distinguished
group of women the hand of fellowship of the Labor Department, and
particularly the portion of the Department which is officially charged
with responsibility concerning the welfare of women, the Women’s
Bureau. I choose my words rather carefully. I choose them after
over two and a half years as the head of this Department of Govern
ment, because I want to assure all of you that although we gladly and
eagerly accept the leadership of Miss Miller and the Women’s Bureau,
there is no Bureau in the Department any less anxious than is the
Women’s Bureau to serve the welfare of women. Every division is
equally interested to the extent that they may have and are articulating
their interest in the problems of women. And I think Miss Miller will
assure you that she has nothing but full cooperation from the staff and
from the members of other Bureaus when any problem concerning
women comes before the Department of Labor.
I congratulate you on the purpose for which you have come—to
celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention of
1848, to review what has happened these hundred years, and to map
out some plans for the future. The President of the United States
came and the Navy Band came to start off these proceedings. It was
not merely by accident that they came. It was because of the realiza
tion upon the part of the President of the importance of the solution
of problems peculiarly within the sphere in which women’s organiza
tions are interested. I haven’t yet and I don’t expect to attain my
hundredth anniversary, but if I should, I hope it will be as happy a
one as the one you today are celebrating here.
When Miss Miller asked me to meet with you this morning, she suggested that I discuss the significance of this particular occasion in the
light of the Seneca Falls meeting 100 years ago. In thinking about
it, my mind kept going back to the circumstances of that occasion and
how different it was from the circumstances of this meeting’here today.
I wonder what would have happened if Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and Susan Anthony had come to Washington in 1848 looking
for a meeting place where they could rally their little group of pioneer
ing women. They would have found muddy unpaved streets; they
would have found few hotels. The pioneering women of 1848 would
4

.y
.
'

have found poor transportation—we do have good transportation
now—and little of the comforts that in this age we take so much for
granted. They would have found no such handsome meeting place as
this to shelter them from the scoffers who regarded them as “unnat
ural” women for seeking to widen their opportunities. They would
have found a Government struggling with the problems arising from
the Mexican War, of which I have never approved. It was the only
time in our history that the United States ever had a policy of imperial
ism. But as a result of that war there were very definite perils to the
Nation which was at that time little more than half a century old and
even then was faced with the prospect of great divisional conflict.
In thinking about all this, I suddenly realized that had those women
come to Washington then, there would have been no Secretary of Labor
to welcome them. I don’t know whether that is such a bad idea after
all, after everything the newspapers have said about me in the last
2y2 years. But I at least head up a Department which is definitely
determined to fight for the rights of the working people of the United
States and definitely determined to fight for the rights of women in the
United States, and I have taken pride in the last 2% years in the fact
that I was privileged under the Act under which I operate to speak on
behalf of the women of the United States, and I have tried to do it
upon every possible occasion.
I also take a particular pride in the fact that when the Supreme
Court of the United States in 1937 for the first time recognized the
right of a State to pass a minimum-wage law for women, it approved
the law of my own State in what is known as the West Coast Hotel
case. I remember the occasion. We were carrying on a rather difficult
fight in the Senate—some of you may have heard about it—in refer
ence to the Supreme Court. The decision came over from the Court
and I got it, and I took it down to Senator Robinson who was then the
majority leader of the Senate, and he read it. And the newspaper
boys outside called me out and they said: “What will be the effect of
this decision upon the court fight ?” I said, “That is not the question.
The question is, ‘What has been the effect of the court fight upon the
opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States V ”
The pioneering women of 1848 would have found no one in the Fed
eral Government whose responsibility it was, in the words of the basic
act creating the Department, to “foster, promote, and develop the wel
fare of wage earners of the United States, to improve their working
conditions and to advance their opportunities for profitable employ
ment.” What is more, they would have found no agency of Govern
ment that was charged with special responsibility for studying the
economic position of women and strengthening their opportunities, as
the Women’s Bureau of this Department does today. Indeed, anyone
who seriously suggested such a Bureau at that time would probably
785372°—48-

■2

have been laughed to scorn. Why should women have economic oppor
tunities? Why should they be stirring around in things political?
Weren’t they well cared for by their husbands? What more could
they ask ? What more could they want ?
The ladies of 1848 made it clear that they wanted more, and women
have been getting more ever since. As I have looked through the
publications and studied the data collected by the Women’s Bureau
which show the progress of women in these hundred years, and com
pared what has happened to American women with what has happened
to American labor as a whole, I have realized more fully than ever
before that they have been traveling down a common road of political
advancement, seeking a common goal of economic development and
strength, of constantly growing influence on the Nation’s character
and development. A century ago the struggle of workers to unite to
improve their condition was a discouraging, often a dangerous one.
Labor’s right to bargain collectively was far from being recognized.
Women’s right to promote their economic welfare and political freedom
was also a discouraging struggle, and sturdy as those women were,
they must often have been heavy-hearted and discouraged. But this
gathering here today shows that they never gave up or gave in. You
have inherited the great, gains they fought for, and you are going on
with the building of “a system of morals of civic honor” on which we
have only made a beginning.
As I turn my attention to the record of women’s achievement in
this past century, it seems to me clear that in spite of set-backs, which
have been many, despite a world in which it is very difficult to make
progress, especially in these latter years when wars and confusion and
distrust seem to be our daily fare, despite all this, the record still shows
an amazing degree of progress for women and some monumental
achievements. For one thing, and it should be a matter of pride to
all women, full political status has been definitely achieved in the
United States. Women, since 1920, have the right to vote. They
may qualify for elective office on the same terms as men. I sometimes
wonder if our young women just growing up realize the blood and
sweat and tears that went into that battle; or if they realize that, in
large areas of the world, that battle is still being fought by women no
less determined than our own women in the past century to gain full
political status. They, now, never have to feel an inferiority complex
because they cannot have a voice in saying who shall be President of
the United States or who shall be a member of the city council. Their
political equality they take for granted; the problem now is to use it
for the general welfare.
Don’t take it too much for granted. Not too much progress has been
made. There are still battles ahead. I was astounded in December
of 1940 when I left the Senate to go on the bench of the Federal District
6

Court in Spokane, Wash., to find that there never had been a woman
on any jury in that district, and that none other than whites had ever
served upon a jury in that district. We had had a State lawT, I think
since about 1920, permitting women to serve on the jury, but here
was a district court of the United States of America, which was about
to plunge into a tremendous war to protect the principles of equality,
and there never had been one woman juror ever chosen and there never
had been any other than a white person chosen as a juror in that
district.
_
They just said it couldn’t be done. Well, I did it. T didn't have
any trouble about it. I told them to put some women’s names in the
box and no longer persist in the idea that there was a question of racial
equality involved in the selection of jurors. We never had any trouble
about it. All we needed to do was to be told about it. And I have
found during 17 years of practice of law that no distinction need be
made as to whether jurors or women or men, or as to what particular
race they belong to, in order that a jury consisting of 12 people make
up its mind and reach the same right result.
In the economic field the change in women’s position is almost more
revolutionary. In the early days of our country we had many foreign
visitors who liked to come and take a look at the ‘‘great experiment
that was going on, on the North American Continent. One of those
visitors was Harriet Martineau. When she visited us in 1836 she was
not impressed by the position of women. According to an account I
have been reading, she “was surprised to find them occupying a very
subordinate position in a country calling itself free and to find that
they had entered only seven paying occupations. They were allowed
to teach (at a small salary), to be seamstresses, tailoresses, milliners,
dressmakers, household servants, and factory operatives.”
It is indeed a dreary picture, and I wish that Harriet Martineau
as well as the ladies of Seneca Falls could be here this morning. They
would find among you women with the highest skills and education
in many fields. They would find educators, civic leaders, medical tech
nicians, business executives, labor leaders, writers who help create
public opinion. They would probably be most surprised to know how
many among you are administrators of labor laws in many < x our
States. That in itself is a measure of the change that these 100 years
have seen.
In December 1947 almost 17 million women were working or seek
ing work. The unemployment among them was very low. What a
contrast to the 2 million women who were recorded similarly in the
first census following the War between the States when our great in
dustrial expansion was just beginning. From the limited opportu
nities of that time, when 13 percent of our women were gainful work
ers, women have forged ahead into all kinds of work. In 1940 a

fourth of our women were in the labor market. Today 30 percent of
our women are at work, and a review of our entire labor force, men
and women, shows that women are also close to 30 percent of our en
tire working population. They are found in hundreds of occupations.
Moreover, they constitute the great bulk of our workers in some of
them. I wonder what would happen if all of these women should
suddenly decide to “retire,” as some of our Stone Age men keep say
ing they should. We would be in a sorry state indeed. Where would
our schools be, for women are 75 percent of our teachers'( Our hosptals couldn’t function, for women are 98 percent of our professional
nurses and 90 percent of our medical laboratory technicians.
Employed women closely touch the daily living of millions of Amer
icans in other ways. Women account for 93 percent of all household
employees and for two-thirds of those who wait on the public in res
taurants and hotels. They also are about 95 percent of all telephone
operators and 40 percent of all persons engaged in light manufactur
ing work. Even in the so-called masculine realm of heavy industry
they constitute 13 percent of all production workers and help to turn
out such products as machinery, transportation equipment, automo
biles, and furniture. They are the great majority of office workers
and of clerks in our great retail industry. It would be a sorry day.
indeed, for the men if women should suddenly decide not to work any
more in paid employment.
We face serious problems in this country today. Unfortunately—
and I don’t think it is anybody’s fault—during the war we were told
that with the end of a shooting war we would have peace, prosperity,
quiet, contentment. I remember particularly a radio program that
came on every night telling about what was going to happen after the
war was over. Part of it was good for the woman, because it said that
she could take her dishes out into the kitchen, put them down some
place, go in and play a game of bridge, and come out and find them
washed, dried, and put back up on the proper shelves. Then there
was another program which said that automobiles were going to be
built in such a way that it wouldn’t be possible to have back-seat
drivers. I didn’t believe that one myself.
Put seriously, we were told that there would be no period of read
justment because readjustment would come almost automatically with
the end of the war. We found out differently. We found that there
were disputes and there were emotions and there were spiritual ideas
that conflicted within our domestic economy, and we found it very
difficult to attain the peace—not with those whom we had conquered
who had unconditionally surrendered, but between us who had suc
ceeded in forcing the unconditional surender.
When a nation assumes the responsibility of war, when it asks the
mother's of this country to send their boys into service in order that
8

we may protect and maintain our democratic system, it also assumes
the responsibility of seeing to it that after the end of that war, after
the sacrifices have been made, we do maintain our democratic institu
tions. It has been demonstrated to us as a result of this Second World
War that under modern conditions you don’t win wars. The nation
which wins simply has to take on the responsibility of taking care of
those whom it has conquered. But in the process of taking care of
those whom we have conquered and taking care of those who live
within our country, we must never forget the goal, and that is an
expanding prosperity and an expanding economy which is going to
result from raising the living standards of those who live within our
borders.
And the women of America know this better than anybody else.
And you who are here representing organizations that have been
studying these precise problems know better than most women know.
This is not merely the 100th Anniversary of the meeting at Seneca
Falls. I would like to see you make of this meeting a place of declara
tion of purposes, by the representatives of the great majority of the
Avomen’s organizations of the United States, that we are going to
continue to expand our economy, that we are going to have prosperity,
that we are going to have peace, happiness, and comfort for the
American people.
And you who are met here today have an opportunity. Don’t talk
too much about Seneca Falls and a hundred years ago. The problems
today to a much greater extent fall upon the women of America.
The problems today require that the women of America take leader
ship and that they see to it that insofar as they offer or you find it
within your grasp you take that leadership, you tell the people of
America what they need to be told, you carry out the program upon
which you decide; and then we need have no fear, because the future
of America would lead down a long path unobstructed, unimpeded,
right through to the far centuries of eternity.

WHO WORKS, WHERE, AND WHY1
Frieda S. Miller, Director, Women’s Bureau

As you can see, when we were planning this morning’s session we
decided to have our dessert first. In that way we could all then settle
down to the serious business of the Conference, confident that we
weren’t going to lose out on the more exciting things. The President
and Secretary have been the dessert. What I am going to offer this
morning is the roast beef and the potatoes and carrots and leafy
vegetables. T invite you to sink your teeth into them with appetite and
gusto because the facts and figures I am going to present are the basic
materials you will need to keep in mind during the following sessions.
All of the things that will be presented by the invited'speakers and
discussed by you from the floor are inevitably conditioned by these
facts about women—“Who Works, Where, and Why.”
The most basic single fact before this meeting is that today about
17,000,000 women are either working or seeking work, and they are,
in exact figures, 28 percent of the entire labor force. To use a slang
phrase, “That is not peanuts.” It is now 2% years after the end of the
greatest war in history. During that war women responded mag
nificently to the country’s need for production. At the peak of their
wartime employment, in July 1944, they numbered almost 201/2 miLlion.
It was thought, and I admit we here in the Women’s Bureau thought
along much the same line, that after the war women’s employment
would fall off precipitously. We feared that a sharp decline in general
employment would react particularly to the disadvantage of women,
and to many of them, responsible for their own and others’ support,
would be disastrous.
In this, I am happy to say, the prognosticators, among them our
selves, were mistaken. Employment as a whole has held up, and the
employment of women has been stable at least in the sense that jobs
have been available. There have been shifts from the better-paying
factory jobs into the less well-paying service trades, and the whole
matter of job opportunities I will discuss more fully later. However,
very few women today who want to work are without jobs. The
figures, for December 1947, show less than half a million. There are
now over 3 million more women in the labor market than in December
1940, and their proportionate place is 3y2 percentage points greater.
1 See charts 1-6, Appendix II, in connection with this address.

In other words, in the 7 years between 1940 and 1947, and disregarding
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 lias a many-sided
significance. In size alone, it is 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 1836, 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 life. 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 19 th
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 2million 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.

But mere numbers are not alone the significant thing. In 1870 the
great bulk of working women were single. Today only 38 percent of
them are single, while 46 percent are married and an additional 16
percent widowed or divorced. That this is a social and economic
change of the greatest significance is a thing that would strike even
the most untutored social scientist, but I shall not go into this in detail
because at tomorrow’s session, in “Family Responsibilities of Earning
Women,” Hazel Kyrk will analyze its significance far better than I can.
The changing age pattern of women workers is also important to
watch. Today about half the women in the labor force are 35 years or
older, which is a marked shift from the pattern of earlier years. It has
always been more customary for women aged 20-24 to work than for
those in any other age group. However, the relative importance of
this group among women workers has been declining, as has that of
still younger women. In 1900 girls aged 14-19 constituted 24 percent
of women workers, but 40 years later they were less than 11 percent.
An additional and more dramatic change is the discontinuance of
child labor among girls in the age group 10-13, who numbered 205
thousand in 1900 but who in 1940 were so few as not to warrant enu
meration in the census tabulations. In the same period the number of
women workers aged 25-44 showed a net increase of over 4 million,
and those of 45 and over topped their 1900 number by 2 million. The
most marked relative change took place among women 35 and over.
Many young women entered the wartime labor market, but it was those
35 and over who accounted for the largest proportion of the war in
crease. After the war most of the decline in the female labor force
took place among young women, resulting in a continued rise in im
portance of the older workers.
Along with these changes have come widening occupational op
portunities for women. It is true, of course, that even today there are
occupations and professions where it is still a handicap to be a woman.
Those are the as yet unconquered continents of opportunity, and we
must continue to work at it until women who can qualify and who want
to qualify can enter them as freely as men. But we have come a long
way from the days of Harriet Martineau and her seven occupations.
The Census of 1940 tells us that women were employed in all but 9 of
the 451 occupational classifications then used. Although such a meas
uring rod provides some index to the diversity of women’s work, it is
still true that three-fourths of the employed women are concentrated in
only 23 occupations, in each of which 100,000 or more women were em
ployed, and where often they were well over half the total employment
in the occupation.
Some of these occupations are worth mentioning because they are
the kind of occupations that have been traditionally “women’s work”
for many a long day. Occupations in which in 1940 over 100,000
12

women were employed and in which they were still more than 75 per
cent of all persons so employed were (in order of rank) servants in
private families; stenographers, typists, and secretaries; teachers; op
eratives on apparel; housekeepers for private families; nurses; tele
phone operators; laundry workers; dressmakers outside of factories;
and boarding and lodginghouse keepers. Occupations in which women
were between 50 and 75 percent of all workers so employed were book
keepers, accountants, and cashiers; waitresses; beauticians; servants
outside private families; and operatives in knit goods production. If
you look closely at this list you will see in it several of the occupations
which were the only ones open to women in 1836—servants, seam
stresses, teachers, and factory operatives in the textile and clothing
industries. While there are those who argue that women are espe
cially suited to such occupations, the 1940 census should entice us to
a moment’s reflection.
A comparison of the 10 leading occupations of women in 1900 with
those in 1940 is an extremely valuable index of the changes since the
beginning of the century in women’s occupations. Reflecting the
transition from rural to urban centers is the disappearance by 1940
of three agricultural occupations which in 1900 had been among the
leading ten. The occupations of dressmaker and seamstress, promi
nent in 1900, by 1940 had been replaced by that of “operative and
kindred worker in apparel and accessory factories,” pointing up the
transition to factory production. The occupations of servant, teacher,
and saleswoman appear as leaders in both periods, demonstrating the
continued demand for women workers in these fields. Probably most
significant is the fact that four occupational groups unimportant ill
1900 had by 1940 emerged among the leaders—stenographers, typists,
and secretaries; bookkeepers, accountants, and cashiers; clerical and
kindred workers; and nurses.
During the recent war period further significant changes took place
in the occupational and industrial distribution of women workers.
The importance of the manufacturing industries rose markedly, while
that of trade and service industries declined.
Present indications on the immediate future point to an approximate
return to the prewar pattern, with gains over the prewar period
notably in clerical and in manufacturing occupations. For example,
in May of 1947 women in durable goods manufacturing were about
13 percent of the total so employed as compared with 9 percent in 1939.
This represents a positive gain in that it probably reflects less restricted
hiring policies, acquisition during the war of new skills which women
are continuing to use, and especially the chance at the better wage
rates which prevail in heavy industry for the women who can hold
their place there.

Not too many years ago, in a discussion such as this, a prominent
place would have been given to the unpaid workers—the maiden aunts
and spinster sisters for whom it was considered improper and often
demeaning to accept paid industrial employment, but who, instead,
attached themselves to a family group, earning their keep by con
tributing to the work of the household.
Change in our emphasis does not mean that the unpaid worker who
contributes to the household has completely disappeared. Another
group continuing to exist are the unpaid family members who work
in the family business enterprise. The 1940 census reports about
400,000 such women. Over half were farm workers, the majority of
whom were nonwhite. About one-fifth were saleswomen, and many
of the others were bookkeepers, cashiers, stenographers, typists, or
waitresses, working in a father’s or husband’s store, factory-office, or
restaurant.
As for the woman lawyer, the woman scientist, or the woman busi
ness executive, these are still the exception in the present world of
women’s work. Less than 5,000 women are employed in each of the
more “glamorous” occupations such as airplane stewardess, actress,
radio commentator, photographer. Even after 100 years of “emanci
pation” women represent less than 5 percent of any such high grade
professional groups as doctors, dentists, engineers, chemists, archi
tects, lawyers, and certified public accountants.
Reasons for the continued concentration of women in a few occu
pations having the earmarks of “traditional” women’s work, and their
slowness in entering more freely other fields, cannot be recounted with
the degree of certainty one would like. A major victory still to be
won by and for women, however, is wider training opportunity.
Few women, for example, are in apprenticed occupations, the way
into skilled technical and mechanical employment. During the war,
of course, women were enrolled in practically all the mechanical and
trade courses open to men. More than half a million women took
preemployment training under the Vocational Training Program for
War Production Workers, and almost double that number took further
training following their employment. They were enrolled in sizable
numbers in courses in aircraft, metal, electrical, mechanical, and hand
trades, and in drafting; and a smaller number took ship- or buildingconstruction courses. A few women are still enrolled in such courses
under the regular vocational program, but the great majority pre
paring for production work, as 1944-45 figures indicate, take training
in dressmaking, power sewing-machine operating, millinery, and tail
oring. The variety of courses under this program, however, is in
creasing, and in some cities women are enrolled in such courses as
fur cutting, upholstering, jewelry- and watchmaking, bookbinding,
and textile work.
14

».

,
v

Even during the war, however, when full industrial production was
essential to victory, and women’s work was essential to full produc
tion, traditional objections toward training women in the skilled
mechanical trades still were hard to break. I well remember my
sense of frustration when faced with a shortage of welders, riveters,
and other types of skilled workers needed especially by the airplane
industry in New York State during the war. The big National
industrial training program was on. The State Department of Edu
cation was recruiting intensively. Still women were not showing up
in the courses that would prepare them for these airplane jobs. I
felt it necessary to take this up with the Governor, and, at the con
ference with the Department of Education representative that fol
lowed, it became clear that the Department was resisting the admis
sion of women to the courses on the ground that to train women thus
was an “unjustified use of the taxpayers’ money because employers
wouldn’t take them.” The idea had never occurred to the Education
Department that in the Nation’s interest they might aggressively un
dertake to overcome an old prejudice. The Governor decided that
women who wanted the training were also taxpayers and fully en
titled to whatever facilities the State had to offer. They did get their
training.
The needs of war extended the breakdown of such obstructionism,
as Women’s Bureau studies on changes in women’s employment dur
ing the war amply show. However, even then opportunities for up
grading and supervisory jobs for women were very limited. They
are probably even more limited now, but we have no good data on this
point. Here is one of the much-needed studies that the Women’s
Bureau would like to make if it had funds available. Until the bottle
necks in employment opportunity for women are broken, only small
numbers of women will be able to step out of the beaten paths of the
traditional occupations.
It might be argued that no further special effort should be made to
expand women’s training opportunities; that in the main the excep
tional woman will get the particular training she wants, and as for the
rest, they do not remain in the labor market long enough to make their
wider training a sound social investment. The statistics I have re
viewed on women’s employment are one answer to this argument. To
work at some, and perhaps at several different, periods of her life is
now the accepted expectation of women themselves and of society for
them. Society should, therefore, not only place no obstacles in the
way of their doing this to the best advantage, but should offer positive
assistance to them. This is the more necessary in view of their need
for the financial returns from the most skilled work they can do.
It would seem almost unnecessary to dwell upon women’s need to
work, but I do not wish to pass over this need lightly because there are

still too many who quarrel with the idea of women on the job, and who
keep saying, “Why don’t the women go home?” Why they don’t is
clear from every recent study of why women work. They work for the
same reasons men do—because they must.
Economic responsibilities fall on the shoulders of women of all ages
and in all marital-status groups. It is widely conceded that single,
widowed, and divorced women must generally be selfsupporting. Not
equally well recognized are the needs of married women. Well over
half of the married women interviewed in a recent Women’s Bureau
study pointed to their need for selfsupport (many had dependents as
well) as the reason for desiring continued employment. A New York
State survey found this need among married women workers even more
prevalent—over four-fifths referred to economic need as their reason
for working.
Telling evidence of the drain which family expenses make on women’s
earnings is the growing mass of information showing the large share
of women’s earnings turned over to their families. Interviews by the
Women’s Bureau have disclosed that 92 percent of employed women
who lived with their families contributed regularly toward family ex
penses, and well over half of them turned over 50 to 100 percent of
their earnings to the family purse. The New York State survey re
ferred to revealed even more widespread contributions. Practically
without exception, women living with their families regularly contrib
uted to the family’s support. Almost three-fourths of them contrib
uted half or more of their pay.
Other surveys attempt to determine what proportion of the total con
tributions to the family exchequer is derived from the earnings of its
women members. A 1939 survey of Cleveland’s women workers
showed that in over half the families it was the earnings of women mem
bers that accounted for 50 percent or more of the total contributions
received by the family from all its earners. A comparable survey in
Utah disclosed that in three-fifths of the families, women’s contribu
tions made up half or more of the family’s receipts from earners.
In the face of these facts there would seem to be no doubt that women
are entitled to the widest opportunities for training in order to make
the most of themselves as employed persons and to discharge their
financial obligations to their dependents.
Equal in importance to expanding their occupational opportunities
is the question of the adequacy of women’s earnings. It is a matter of
common knowledge that the general wage levels of women are lower
than those of men, and that the predominantly woman-employing in
dustries are the low-wage industries. This is still true even though,
for decades, women have been an important factor in the labor force.
In part, this is a continuance of the traditional idea about the value
of women’s work prevalent in the early days of our industrialization.
16

At that time, when women were first entering industry as a new part
of the labor force, they carried over into the factory household skills
that did not have a high money value. They were paid in the factories
at lower scales of wages than those usually paid to men. This was the
same type of wage exploitation that ordinarily occurs with the en
trance into industry of any new group, like migrant workers or workers
of different nationalities or races.
Long after women had demonstrated their efficiency in various
skilled occupations, these low wage scales have continued even though
industry has come to depend on women’s work to an increasing degree.
Data reported monthly by the National Industrial Conference Board
continue to show, as they have for years, that women’s average earn
ings in selected manufacturing industries not only are far below men’s,
but women’s averages even continue to be below those of unskilled men.
In December 1947, earnings of all workers averaged $57.54 a week,
earnings of unskilled men averaged $49.79 a week, but women’s earn
ings averaged only $41.39 a week.
These differences which in part reflect the return that industry gives
to women for the same or similar work not only constitute an injustice
to women but are a matter of serious import to the economy as a whole.
It is an axiom of wage theory that when large numbers of workers can
be hired at lower rates of pay than those prevailing at any given time,
the competition of such persons for jobs results either in the displace
ment of the higher paid workers or in the acceptance of lower rates
by those workers. Over a period of time this pressure tends to depress
all wage levels, and unless this normal course is averted by direct action
it results eventually in lower levels of earnings for all, with a resulting
i eduction in purchasing power and in standards of living. Because of
their new war-born training and skills, women are, as never before, in
a position to be used by unscrupulous employers as wage cutters. This
they resent, both on their own account and on the men’s account.
Women have a deep, natural interest in the welfare of families and
they know that every time a workingman’s income is reduced, his
family’s standard of living is inevitably lowered. In consideration of
our national objective of high living standards and full employment, I
submit that we cannot afford to risk the threat to general wage levels
that unequal pay to women involves.
Nine States now have equal-pay law's, but there is a long way to go
before administrative and enforcement procedures can be organized to
produce optimum effects. Moreover, there is still no Federal law.
Last week both the Secretary and I testified in favor of a Federal bill
but we discovered that, between 1945 and the present, opposition has
become manifest. Industry representatives testified against the bill,
not on “general principle,” mind you, but on the ground that such
legislation is not necessary. The representative of the National Asso-

ciation of Manufacturers, who presented industry’s general position
said, in part, “The issue of equal pay for women is today a rapidly
disappearing problem in industry. . . . employers generally have
accepted and applied the principle of equal pay for equal work.” I
refer you to the testimony of the proponents, both at the 1945 hearings
and at those recently concluded, for the more familiar picture.
As the conference proceeds you will be reviewing these facts in the
light of still other related developments. I can see no prospective
dearth of work to be done, no chance that we may be tempted to slip
into complacency. But the resolution of current complexities must be
in terms of today and tomorrow. There is no use in our seeking an
answer to the economic problems of the American woman in 1948
by looking backward to those “good old days” wdien women in large
numbers neither sought nor needed to seek paid employment outside
the home. The women who met in Seneca Falls in 1848 were the ad
venturous women of their time; they were the seekers after new
answers to their current difficulties and dissatisfactions. But all their
unconventionality of thought and ambition could not have brought
women to where they are today, either economically or politically,
unless the world itself had conspired with them. In 1848 times were
already changing and the industrial era that was opening up was
going to need women. The acceleration in the development of an in
dustrial and money economy, in contrast to an agricultural economy,
meant less and less production in the home and more and more in the
factory. Cash that women could earn outside the home was to become
more important to them and to their families than continuation of the
older home-making arts through which they had made their economic
contribution in an earlier society.
As fai as we can now see there is no reversal of this process in store.
Hitler tried to turn back the clock for women, but he failed. Others
who seek to take that path will also fail. It is our job in 1948, then,
to take stock of where we are, to set our sights, on where we want to
go, and to conspire with the future, as those women did whose work we
are here to honor, to help coming generations of women make equal
progress and as great a contribution as did their predecessors in terms
of the world of the next century.

February 1 7 Afternoon Session
conference addresses

American Women on the Job

Gains and Goals of Women Workers, Gladys Dickason
The Role of Legislation in Meeting Basic Problems of Working Conditions,
Elizabeth S. Magee
Commentary, Irma Rittenhouse

GAINS AND GOALS OF WOMEN WORKERS
Gladys Dickason, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

ADAM Chairman, members of the conference, I am quite de
lighted that it is Miss Miller who is the chairman of this con
ference which commemorates that convention of 1848 in which
the women’s rights movement got well under way. I don’t think that
there is a woman in public life today who exemplifies more fully the
contribution which women could make to our economic, social, and
political life that was envisioned by that conference in 1848 than Miss
Miller does.
This is a very important conference. We sometimes take for granted
the gains that women have made. Our natural point of view that
the world just automatically gets better has been somewhat shaken
by two world wars, but none the less, quite unconsciously we keep on
thinking, believing, “Well, if we let it alone, it will just go along;
things will do all right by themselves.”
I think with reference to women’s role in society that what happened
in Germany and Italy should teach us a lesson. Women were thrown
backward in the fascist countries, as women’s place, women’s status
is always made inferior in periods of reaction. We have made very
great gains in the last hundred years, perhaps in our clothes as much
as anything else. And despite the “new look” which has added those
inches to our dresses and so forth, the yards we wear today are nothing
as compared with what they were even 20 years ago or 30 years ago, let
alone a hundred years ago, so that our clothing is such that we can
move about freely. It is a great gain and one, I think, that we will
hold to.
That we have a Women’s Bureau is something I think the women
of 1848 didn’t really think would be possible, and we need a Women’s

Bureau. Perhaps one of our goals for the next hundred years—and
I only hope that we can make as much progress for women in our
society during the next hundred years as we have made in the past
hundred years—perhaps one of our goals should be that women be
accepted fully in the labor force, in politics, and in other aspects of
public life as individuals, as human beings, as people, not as a supply
of cheap labor nor as a group to be tolerated but not welcomed. I
have no doubt that even then we will still need a Women’s Bureau,
because the problems of women working and maintaining a home will
always be with us.
But today when the number of women in the labor force is increasing
so rapidly, and when conditions under which working women work
so seriously affect general wage levels and thus affect the prosperity
of the country, a Women’s Bureau is an indispensable agency of good
government.
We take for granted now the right to vote. It was hard fought
for and won with great difficulty. We complain sometimes today that
women don’t have their full place in political parties or exercise their
full influence at the polls. But in the nearly 30 years of suffrage the
progress that has been made in that direction is quite remarkable. I
remember when 1 was in college shortly after the suffrage amendment
was passed; apparently the political parties had been advised that
now that women had the vote it would be a good idea to have a woman
on most of the congressional committees, and so on, just to make it look
good; I remember attending a meeting where there were almost no
women present, very few. I remember the discussion that took place
as to the woman who should be on the committee for the congressional
district of that particular party. The discussion had nothing to do,
really, with the capabilities of the women who were interested and
could help, nor had it anything to do with the contributions that a
woman could make on that committee. Being on the committee was
something that would be handed out to whatever woman happened to
be available and happened to have some friends around; her name
would be listed, and that would be all.
I am sure that we have gone far beyond that stage now—not as far
as we should like, but nonetheless far.
While I am confining myself chiefly to discussion of women in jobs,
I can’t refrain from mentioning also that when I went to Columbia
University to enter the graduate school to work in political science,
I wanted to take a course in constitutional law that was given in the
law school. It was against the rules for women to take courses in the
law school. The Dean finally suggested that perhaps they would put a
curtain in the corner of the room and let me sit behind that. Then I
could take the law course that I wanted to take.
20

Every one of you women sitting here in this room can remember
things of that sort in your own experience. It is only when we re
member those things that we can take some pride in the progress that
we have made in all fields.
In the economic sphere, what has been happening over the last
hundred years, is, as so well pointed out in Miss Miller’s address this
morning, the transfer of women’s work from the home to the factory
or to the laundry, the office, the mill. And as for those people who
have complained about the competition of women workers in the labor
market, I think it would be well for them to realize that women are
not going out and taking away jobs that were formerly men’s or that
really belonged to someone else, but that they are merely following
into the public place of work the job which formerly was performed at
home.
I think that holds true for young girls as well as for married women
and women who are heads of families who make tip the working force.
The young girl in the family of 30 or 40 years ago, when she left school,
vTas a productive worker at home in that she helped with the canning,
she helped with the sewing, she helped with the baking, she helped
with the washing, she helped with all of those things that are done in
factories now. The girl had a job at home. The idea that the girls
stayed at home and were supported by their fathers and brothers has,
of course, been just one of those things that has no basis in reality.
The women worked and worked hard in the homes. They still do.
But they cannot make the economic contribution in the home or in most
homes now that they could then, because the work can be more effi
ciently done in the factories. Because of that, and since we are
assessing gains of the last hundred years and looking over some goals
perhaps not for as far as a hundred but for the immediate years
ahead—one of the things that I hope will happen is that—if all of us
can really absorb the concept, if the concept can be generally accepted
that women have simply changed the place of their productive activ
ity—then women will be accepted in industry, the professions, in all
types of work, more readily than they are today.
I don’t forget, and I don’t think you do, the talk in the 1930’s—the
newspapers were full of it—about the discharge of married women.
With 15 million people unemployed, married women should not work,
was the idea current. Of course, the greatest goal of women must be
the goal as workers and citizens to help bring about a condition of
full employment, to continue a condition of full employment, so that
we shall not have the problem of: “Shall married women have jobs
when men are unemployed?”
But on that point, I would like to comment that we have no needs
test for men as workers, and that is what questioning the right of
married women or of girls living at home to work amounts to. All
785372”—48------ 3

of us are well aware that many men work who inherited money or
whose fathers make enough money so that they could support those
men, could even support the families of young men. But our society
doesn’t think of saying to a young man when he applies for a job,
even in a depression, “Well, now, can your father support you? Do
you really need this job?” It is expected that a man should have a
job. And I think, as we do not apply a needs test to men for jobs,
that we should not apply a needs test to women. And certainly, we
should not assume that just because women are married they have
no need to work. Nobody when talking about married women work
ing has proposed to find out how many dependents the man and wife
are supporting. We haven’t talked about a needs test for jobs, any
way. We think in terms of: ‘‘Can this worker do the job?” I think
that that aspect of what we may hope for ahead perhaps comes to
my mind from reading the papers and seeing what is happening in
the grain markets, and so forth, and from the constant talk about
the prospect that we may or must face a recession or a depression.
I am not convinced that we must. But I do sincerely hope that if
the time does come when jobs are not so plentiful as they are today,
women will be regarded as people and treated on the same basis as
men who apply for work.
As work went out of the home and millions of women went into the
labor force, protective labor legislation was passed. Some people
get discouraged with the effect of that protective legislation or they
get discouraged because State legislation protecting women workers
is not widespread enough, and therefore, because there is not enough
of it or it hasn’t done enough, they think maybe we should try some
thing else.
I work with women every day of my life, and have for years. I
worked with women, and men, by the way, in Pennsylvania in 1933,
when those women were working for $3 a week. Of course, women
in the garment industry are today, as are men, protected by a mini
mum-wage law of 40 cents an hour, which is not adequate, but at least
the principle has been established.
But even today, in States where we don’t have minimum-wage legis
lation for women, you can find women working for 20 cents an hour.
I mention those facts and those figures because I personally do not
feel that minimum-wage legislation by the States and other protective
legislation for women has failed. I think that it has been one of
the great gains of the past years, and it is something that we must
extend. We must see minimum-wage legislation passed in those States
where we do not have it. In the States where we do have it, it should
be extended to industries where it does not now apply, and where mini
mum wages are not high enough, they should be increased. But simply
because there are problems with minimum-wage legislation, or because
22

*
,

it has not gone as far as some people would like—as all of us would
like—is no reason for feeling that it has not served a valuable purpose.
It is my feeling that we have reached a stage where we can think
in terms of a broader concept for women than perhaps wTas enunciated
a hundred years ago. Those women of 1848 suggested an amendment
to the Declaration of Independence to state that all men and women
are created equal. I think that battle has been very largely won. I
don’t think anybody would argue that men and women are not equal,
or argue it very seriously, today. In practice, men and women may
not alwTays be treated equally in those areas where they should be, but
as far as the concept is concerned, I don’t think it is any longer open
to debate.
And as our thinking about the place of government in society, in
the prosperity of our society, as our thinking about that has changed,
particularly during the past 15 years, it seems to me that the concept
of equal status for women—and, if you please, equal rights for men—
is one which fits into modern thinking and leads to more constructive
goals for men and for women. The fact that men and women are
equal does not make them identical. Being not identical, there will
always be special problems relating to women. By recognizing that
fact and making gains as we can through protective legislation, by
clearing away all of those laws which interfere with equal status for
women, women can have a more assured position and can be more
assured of equality than they can by ignoring the differences and
seeking oidy a theoretical equality.
I think that everyone will agree that differentiation is the outstand
ing characteristic of democracy. I feel that that same differentiation
of treatment with reference to the groups where real differences exist
is a constructive feature of democracy.
Working at night is not a virtue for anybody. It is not good for
women, but it is not good for men either. Working at night does
not contribute to a happy home life for men any more than it does
for women. And as an ideal—not for the moment while we have
great shortages, for we are talking here about goals—as a goal, it
would seem to me that if we set our sights on an adequate productive
mechanism, so that no people—men or women—would have to work
at night except in those industries or occupations that must be carried
on at night, we would have a sounder social outlook.
The same thing applies, I think, to working for substandard wages.
A man can’t support or feed children on a substandard wage any
better than a woman can. And I have talked with men in the garment
industry who have worked for as long as 7 years, and at the end of
the 7 years were earning only $3 a week. That, of course, was during
the depression, but it happened. It wasn’t only to women. More
women, of course, than men were working at those very low wages.

But the line of progress—and that line has been adopted by the Fed
eral Government in wage and hour legislation—seems to me to lie
not along giving up any of the protective, regulations that we have
put into effect which benefit women, but rather along extending those
regulations so that they benefit men as well as women.
One of the greatest gains outside the legislative field—one of the
greatest gains for women workers during recent years has been their
increasing membership in trade unions. Through trade unions
women have been able to increase their wages. They have been able
in many unions under many union contracts to secure paid holidays,
paid vacations; so that, instead of a holiday or a vacation being a
burden to women because they then do not know how to pay their
room rent or to pay the grocery bill, they can actually get some rest
on those holidays and during the vacations.
The trade-union contracts have provided for rest periods, for
maternity leave; many of them now provide for insurance, which is
payable during sickness and for cash benefits for maternity. All of
those things have been helpful to working women. Those are the
things in the trade-union contracts which are of immediate cash bene
fit, or are benefits enabling a woman to get more rest and make her
better able to carry that terrific job of a combination of work at home
and work in the factory.
But I think one of the greatest contributions that the trade-union
movement makes to women workers is the opportunity that it gives
women to exercise their capacities for leadership. There is nothing
that gives me personally greater pleasure than to work with a group
of women workers, let us say, like a group I have recently become
acquainted with in the State of Mississippi, where some of the women
workers have not thought in terms of much more than getting the job
done; but, as those women participate in the organization, they find
the scope of their thinking expanding very broadly, not only with
reference to the daily work of their jobs, but into political fields, fields
of civil rights, to all of the things that citizens should be interested in.
So I think that through the union movement and through the in
creasing membership of women in unions, a great contribution to good
citizenship in this country has been made.
I think that during the next few years to come a greater under
standing of the labor movement (and I am happy to have the oppor
tunity to talk here this afternoon with women from so many fields of
activity) will contribute to an improved status for women. The tradeunion movement so often gets misrepresented because strikes are so
much more dramatic than, say, a record of 30 years of peace. I have
never seen a headline saying that a union has had a contract in this
or that factory for 30 years, standards have steadily improved, and
24

there never lias been a day’s work lost due to a strike. We don’t have
headlines about that. We only have headlines where collective bar
gaining breaks down. X think one of the things that can be helpful
to women is a greater understanding of the labor movement by all
women.
An outstanding southern editor recently said that the trade-union
movement could make a greater contribution toward the solution of
the racial problem in the South than could any other group in the
country. It is my firm conviction that the trade-union movement can
make an equally great contribution, working with millions of women
in factories and in the service occupations, in helping them to partici
pate fully in the life of our times.
The greatest problem facing the women in the factories, the laun
dries, the stores—and I think this applies to secretaries and profes
sional women as well—the most difficult problem is the problem of
combining home and job. During the war more progress was made
on that, I think, than had been made in the previous years. A great
many things were tried out, experimented with. Some firms brought
laundry machines in and set aside space, hired somebody to take care
of them, and the women workers could bring their laundry in in the
morning, it was put through the machines, and when they got ready
to go home, they could take it home with them. Grocery stores were
opened up in factories and time allowed for women to do their shop
ping. Arrangements were made with retail stores for salespersons to
come to the factory with samples at given hours, during rest periods
and at other times, so that women could buy staple household articles,
articles of clothing. All of those things may seem small things, but all
of them were a tremendous step in the right direction.
So many women are exhausted because with 8 hours in the factory
or other occupation and an hour for lunch and a couple of hours of
traveling time, there you have 11 hours a day. Before they have
come to the factory they have been up, cooked for the children, got
them dressed and off to school. Then, after work, they go home, get
supper, do some washing and mending, and only go to bed to get
enough sleep to be able to get up and do it again the next day.
The one thing that women workers whom I have worked with
most in the last 10 years most strongly wanted was that Saturday
off. That meant so much to women because, if they had Saturday
off from the job then they could do the laundry, they could scrub the
floors, they could do their housework, and could actually have a day
of rest on Sunday. But even with the Saturday off, the double burden
(I know that is the major subject of our discussion tomorrow, but I
still want to take this opportunity at least to refer to it)—the double
burden is so great a problem that some thinking during the coming

years along the lines of what industry, government, and organized
labor together can do to reduce that burden will, I think, be one of
the most constructive programs that can be carried on as far as work
ing women are concerned.
I have found in the men’s garment industry during the last 2 or 3
years a very marked change in the attitude of employers toward
women workers. It has come, of course, more owing to the shortage of
women for jobs in factories than anything else. It is an outgrowth
of the war situation and of the continuing demand for women work
ers. For a long time we met with a very natural reaction of irrita
tion about women being absent, or women taking maternity leave,
but only irritation, not planning to meet the normal conditions of
employment of women. But as we have gone along during these
years, the basic fact that, in a woman-employing industry, a method
of operation must be devised which takes into consideration the nor
mal functions of women and which does not prove burdensome (or
even catastrophic, as when on section work, too many women on the
same section leave at the same time) has been more clearly recognized.
So that now, instead of an attitude of irritation and complaint about
absenteeism, and so on, there is more understanding, and if manage
ment and workers, jointly with government, begin to study just how
much labor turn-over there is among working women and what the
causes of absenteeism are, and they then work together at the job of
solving the problem, progress can be made.
Miss Miller this morning referred to the lower wages on women’s
jobs. The figures she cited are conclusive, of course, on the matter.
But one of the effects of the shortage of women workers during the
war, and since, has been to change the attitudes about the classifica
tion of certain jobs that women work on. Work in the shirt factories,
for example, was always considered unskilled until the last 3 or 4 years.
Since that time it is not any longer considered unskilled. Women
workers are hard to get now. It is hard to get somebody to take the
place of another woman today to learn a job of sewing sleeves into
a shirt, for example. It takes 6 months to learn to do that job right,
to do it fast enough to get up to average production. Jobs of this
sort were classified as semiskilled before, as high-speed sewing ma
chine jobs. They were officially classed as semiskilled, but they were
actually regarded by the employers as unskilled. But the effect of
there not being a mass of women outside the doors looking for those
jobs has resulted in their being classified as what they have always
been—skilled jobs.
I think a little more of that kind of experience in American industry
may have some influence on the attitude toward all of the jobs which
women hold which are considered unskilled just because women hold
26

them. By definition they are unskilled because women do them. I
think that attitude has been changing.
The real line of progress for women, of course, lies in jobs for every
body in our society. Women’s problems, as well as minority problems,
and all other related types of problems are less acute when we have
full employment and prosperity. Through improving conditions of
work for women we work in that direction, and in working in that
direction lies the greatest possibility of improvement of working con
ditions for all working \tomen. I thank you.

THE ROLE OF WOMEN’S LEGISLATION IN
MEETING BASIC PROBLEMS OF
WORKING CONDITIONS1
Elizabeth S. Magee, National Consumers League

Since we are keying the discussions of this conference to the progress
which women have made in the last century, it may be appropriate to
take a backward look for a moment to the time when we had no labor
laws for women. In Massachusetts a little over a century ago, the
Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, composed of workers in
textile mills, presented petitions to the legislature urging the passage
of a law “providing 10 hours shall constitute a day’s work.” The peti
tions declared that they were confined “from 13 to 14 hours per day in
unhealthy apartments” and were thereby “hastening through pain,
disease, and privation, down to a premature grave.” The story of what
happened to those petitions is reminiscent of the experience which
many of us have had in working with legislatures : a special legis
lative committee was appointed to consider the petitions.
This was the first governmental investigation of labor conditions in
the United States. After hearing testimony from manufacturers to
the effect that the average daily hours in the mills were actually from
12 to 13 hours in April, and 1114 hours in December and January, the
committee unanimously recommended that legislation was not neces
sary at that time; that the health of the operatives was not being im
paired by work in the mills; that the State could not reduce hours and
compete with other States; and that legislation as to hours was bound
to affect wages. Better conditions should come, the committee said,
“by improvements in the arts and sciences, and in a higher appreciation
of man’s destiny, in a less love for money, and a more ardent love for
social happiness and intellectual superiority.” The members further
agreed, “the remedy is not with us.”
As an indication of the militancy of the members of the Lowell
Female Labor Reform Association, it is encouraging to note that
through their activity the chairman of this special committee of the
legislature was defeated for reelection. A long struggle ensued, with
more legislative committees and more campaigns, until finally, in
1874, a law was passed limiting the hours for women in manufacturing
1 See Appendix III, Summary of State Labor Laws for Women, in connection with this
address.

’

in Massachusetts to 10 a day and 60 per week. This was the first
effective law passed in the United States limiting the hours of women’s
employment.
Shortening the hours of work was one of the basic aims of the young
and struggling labor movement during this period. Efforts to secure
legislation for women paralleled the efforts of labor groups to secure
shorter hours for men. The legislative battle was an arduous one.
Although certain forward-looking employers voluntarily established
shorter hours, and some were willing to speak out for them, the
organized employer groups used the weight of their influence in State
legislative halls in opposing every advance. It was a tough job to get
the 10-hour day accepted, and another tough job to bring it down to 9
hours and then to 8. Legislatures had to be convinced over the opposi
tion of employers’ organizations, and court battles had to be fought.
As the total hours were brought down, the coverage was gradually
extended to more occupations, the first laws having dealt exclusively
wdth women in factories. It was not until 1915 that the Supreme Court
decision upholding the California 8-hour law 2 established the, prin
ciple that if the State could control the hours of girls who worked in
millinery establishments, the State could control the hours of chamber
maids in hotels.
With this brief and sketchy review of the history of labor legislation
for women as a background, I want to move on to discuss three things:
1. The status of the major types of such legislation today;
2. The factors which have affected the trends in this field in the
last decade; and
3. Our responsibility for the promotion of standards which will
advance women’s economic status.
As we look at our situation today, viewed from the standpoint of
100 years ago, great progress has been made in reducing the workday
and week, in achieving what Florence Kelley used to call “leisure by
statute,” but it is not good enough. Only 24 States and the District
of Columbia have either an 8-hour day or a 44—18-hour week, or both.
The 9-hour day with a 50- or 54-hour week is the limit in 10 States;
the 10-hour day with a 54- to 60-hour week in 7 States. One State
allows a 1014-hour day and one sets a weekly limit only. In 5 States—
Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, and West Virginia—there are no
limits, either daily or weekly. In other words, in half of the States the
8-hour day has no legal basis.
Closely related to the weekly and daily hours is the day of rest.
Again about half of the States provide one day’s rest in seven, and half
are without it. There is probably no more important standard for the
protection of health, both of men and women, than this.
2 Miller v. Wilson, 236 U. S. 373 ; 35 Sup. Ct. 342 (1915).

In the field of minimum wage, there are 26 States with minimumwage laws in effect, 22 States without. (Four of the State laws have
been extended in the last decade to cover men.) The Federal Fair
Labor Standards Act affects those women who are engaged in inter
state commerce or in manufacturing goods which move in interstate
commerce. I shall have more to say about that important law later.
The statutes affecting working conditions for women, such as lunch
periods, seating, protection from dangerous materials, are very
“spotty.” Over 20 States, for instance, have no requirement of a meal
period.
•
In all these laws many women are left out of coverage. Hospitals
and other institutions have resisted regulation successfully in many
States. Women in industrialized agriculture are practically without
any regulation. In the occupations close to agriculture, such as can
neries, fruit and vegetable packing sheds, and the like, unlimited over
time is allowed in many States. Domestic service is a field which is
practically without standards. The regulation of hours and wages
for this group presents very special difficulties, but there is certainly
no good reason why they should be excluded from the protection of
Social Security laws.
Several factors stand out in the last decade which have bearing on
legislative trends. One is the substantial increase in the organization
of women in trade unions. This, of course, has meant very real gains
both for the women in the unions and for the unorganized workers
whose standards and status are affected by the achievements of the
organized. The increased organization, however, has led to a public
impression in many quarters that there is no need for labor legislation,
because the unions can take care of working conditions themselves.
That this is a short-sighted and erroneous conclusion is obvious when
Ave realize that although several million women probably are in trade
unions, there are many kinds of work in which women are employed
that are completely unorganized.
In the second place, Federal labor legislation of the last decade is
of great significance. Outstanding among the enactments of the New
Deal period was the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, bringing mini
mum-wage protection to thousands of women for the first time. But
Federal action cannot cover all workers. State laws must be enacted
to establish minimum wages for the large body of women employed in
strictly intrastate occupations, such as retail and service trades, and
to conserve the shorter workday. But somehow, the public has gotten
the impression that Federal legislation has taken care of everything!
The third factor of importance is World War II. The great ex
pansion of industry and the increased demands for labor widened
occupational opportunities for many women; it brought out clearly
the need for equal-pay legislation—the one type of women’s legisla30

-t,
*

tion, incidentally, which has made any advance in the States in the
last decade. Two States had adopted equal-pay legislation follow
ing World War I, and seven more have enacted statutes in the last 5
years. A Federal bill, as you all know, which would operate with
approximately the same coverage as the Fair Labor Standards Act,
is now pending in the Congress.
Another effect of the war experience on legislation grows out of
the relaxation of standards during the war period. Some States han
dled the adjustment of working hours with more careful and orderly
arrangements than others. In some States “the lid was off.” In spite
of standards promulgated by all agencies of the Federal Government
connected with the procurement of war materials, long hours and
careless standards were allowed to prevail in many areas. This sit
uation has reflected itself in backward steps in two States since the end
of the. war. In Ohio, the 8-hour day was for all practical purposes
abolished in all except a few occupations last year. In Pennsylvania,
where an 8-hour day and a 44-hour week had been in effect, the law was
changed in 1947 to a 10-hour day and a 48-hour week.
In the early campaigns against sweatshop conditions, it was com
paratively easy to enlist the support of at least a few of the prosperous
and privileged members of society to help improve the lot of women
workers. It was comparatively easy to arouse the conscience of the
public against the dangers of industrial home work in tenements, to
create sympathy for the overworked shop girl who tried to live in a
hall bedroom on $5 a week, and to evoke pity for the plight of the
immigrant mother who worked at night to eke out the family income.
As the standards of living of the working population have improved,
partly as a result of legislative measures, the philanthropic and benevo
lent attitude toward working women has changed. This is all to the
good. At the same time there has developed considerable indifference
toward the problems which still exist, which are not as dramatic
and colorful as those which aroused sympathy some decades ago.
In 1944, in the midst of the war, the International Labor Confer
ence held its meeting in Philadelphia, at which it adopted a set of
principles to guide the nations in the postwar period. In this socalled Philadelphia Charter there is this significant statement: “The
Conference recognizes the solemn obligation of the International
Labour Organisation to further among the nations of the world
. . . policies in regard to wages and earnings, hours, and other con
ditions of work calculated to ensure a just share of the fruits of prog
ress to all.” What should the fruits of progress include for women
workers ? A rising standard of living, leisure, safety at work, health
ful conditions, widening opportunities, security. Certainly these are
goals which challenge all of us.

One of our responsibilities as a member of the United Nations is to
see that the standards and policies adopted by the International Labor
Organization become implemented throughout our country. By recent
amendment of the constitution of the ILO, the United States will be
obligated to work for compliance with ILO conventions on the part of
tli© States. The ILO conventions include such basic standards as the
8-hour day, minimum wage, protection of youth against hazardous oc
cupations.
I profoundly wish that more national women’s organizations would
take a position on such a basic measure as the Fair Labor Standards
Act, the amendment of which is now under consideration by the Con
gress. The philosophy of the whole minimum-wage idea is now under
bitter attack by certain organizations, which are taking advantage
of what they undoubtedly consider the postwar reactionary spirit, to
get rid of this legislation.
A large employer recently stated the role which minimum Wage
should play in this period:
If we review what happened in the 15 years after the ending of the last war,
we note that once the pent-up war demands had been filled and competition had
become more intense, it was common practice to cut wages in order to procure
specific orders at narrowing margins. This was frequently offered to labor as an
alternative to idleness and finally wound up in a deflationary spiral which brought
the average wage in the country to such a low level that the entire economy
almost became stalled—want and misery were everywhere. No thinking business
man would like to risk such a spiral as a prospect for the 1950 decade. The
surest way to avoid a recurrence of such tragic happenings would be a revision
upward, of minimum-wage levels to bear some reasonable relationship to labor’s
present-day living costs. Unbridled wage cutting is a practice which should be
forever removed from the arena of legitimate competitive activities.”

Some of the organizations which worked for State minimum-wage
laws many years ago are silent now’ while this maior struggle is going
on in Congress.
I wish, also, that more effort would be made by State branches of
women’s organizations to see to it that legislative standards for women
workers are raised in their own States. There are some notable excepf ions but, by and large, there is little activity in State legislation now,
either to improve existing standards or to defend them when they are
under attack.
I recognize the preoccupation with legislation in the field of foreign
affairs on which women have worked hard and successfully, but in
considering our international obligations, let us not forget our share
of responsibility for implementing the programs for domestic stand
ards involved in our own membership in the United Nations.
_ ” From a statement filed by J. Spencer Love, President of the Burlington Mills, in Xorth
Carolina, with the House Committee on Education and Labor.

COMMENTARY
Irma Rittenhouse, Division of Placement and Unemployment Insurance,
New York State Department of Labor

Madam Chairman and members of the conference, while I was
listening today—and I am very much of an amateur, I might as well
point out, in this field of the economic problems of women—I was
much impressed by one keynote that seemed to be struck over and over
again. In order to explain why this was so, I ought to tell you that
some years ago when I lived in Washington I had as a great friend an
old-time suffragette, one of those women who had been on a hunger
strike here in the local jail, had picketed the White House, and so on,
many, many years ago. And I remember she told me that back in 1848
and in the following years when the first struggles for women’s rights
were initiated, one of the strongest arguments for permitting women
to have the vote was that women would purify the political picture.
Now, I was delighted to find today that taken by and large we work
ing women are holding out for the right to he as great rapscallions as
ever men have been, and I am sure that we can count on the same kind
of behavior on the part of our women in political life. We even man
aged to drag in a union jurisdictional dispute at this meeting where
we were supposed to talk about how to improve our social and general
moral, esthetic, and cultural outlook.
Miss Dickason remarked when she opened her address that she
thought many of the gains which she referred to were being taken for
granted in the field of women’s rights on the economic front. From
what I heard here today, particularly from women who are working in
industry throughout the country, I would say that there are still a
number of problems, some of them somewhat new in character, some of
these of course developing out of the fact that women now represent a
large part of the labor force, others developing out of the fact that we
are in a period of acute demand for labor at present (in a large number
of fields at any rate)—new kinds of problems for women workers, who,
speaking broadly, are in a weak position.
How anyone, after hearing the kind of discussion that has gone on
here this afternoon, could feel that we ought to take gains for granted,
I must admit is something that I as somewhat of an outsider cannot
see. Miss Magee further emphasized this impression when she began
to quote figures on current hours legislation that sounded like the hours
legislation she had described in the early part of her address as existing
about a hundred years ago. I was frankly surprised to find how few

States have any kind of protective legislation with respect to hours,
earnings, rest periods, lunch periods, and that sort of thing. So that’
far from taking gains for granted, I think if there is one thing that
we could bring home from this conference, it would be the need to ac
quaint ourselves with the actual situation and to try to think through
what we ought to do about it and where our pressures can be most
effectively exerted.
Another point Miss Dickason made also needs, I think, a considerable
amount of thought on our part, and that is the point that full employ
ment is after all a major solution of some of our problems. Although
that is true and we can readily, of course, understand the advantages of
full employment to us as workers—they are obvious—I am afraid that
the present full employment situation may be doing a good deal to put
us to sleep about the kind of problems that face thousands if not mil
lions of workers in this country.
I know, for example, from what I heard here this afternoon that
very low wages are still being paid, in spite of the fact that the general
ization most commonly made nowadays is, “Wages are high and we
have full employment.” I have even heard persons who should be
indeed well informed remark that there was no need that they could
see for minimum-wage boards meeting in New York at the present
time, because all wages were much higher than any rates set by those
boards at any time, anyway.
Well now, what is the point of a statement of that sort, when the
actual meeting and discussions of the boards revealed that the rates
that they wished to set were not entirely satisfactory in all parts of
industry i What is the point of it, when representatives ,of the
laundry industry, who are here this afternoon, can quote the kind of
figures they have quoted ?
I remember that after the War, although controls on wages had been
removed, there were spots in New York State where side by side there
were wages offered for women workers of 90 cents and $1.20 an hour,
and other local employers were offering them 50 cents an hour. You
would not think that could happen if you ever studied economics of
the old variety which taught that there was one price in a market.
But it does happen, and it is going on today.
Now, that is the kind of thing that can exist side by side with full
employment, and that I think we have to keep our eye on at all times.
I have also been very much struck, as I am sure you all were, by
some of the descriptions of this problem of trying to meet home re
sponsibilities and at the same time work in a plant or in an office.
I have an acute personal interest in the problem, I must say. But
when I hear these descriptions of what women working in factories
particularly are up against, when I see it among my friends who are
working in New York, I sometimes think that probably 50 years
34

ii'om now the conditions under which women worked in this respect
will be described in the same imaginative and horrendous tones that
Dickens used almost a hundred years ago to describe some of the evils
then existing in England.
In other words, it hardly seems possible from the standpoint of
proper and humane treatment of a human being that women should be
attempting—and I mean this seriously, although there is a lot of joking
about it—to run their homes, particularly when there are children,
and carrv out their many domestic responsibilities, and to work at the
same time. Frankly, I don’t think it can be done. And I am positive
that before long there will be drastic changes made with respect to this
problem.
As has already been pointed out, there are plants already that are
attempting to face the problem through the creation of day nurseries.
There is scarcely anything more sensible that a plant can do that wants
female labor than to provide a place where children can be taken care
of while the mother works.1
Those of you who have followed recent English developments during
and since the War know that this is widespread in England as a
permanent proposition, just as cafeterias where good hot food can be
supplied have become a permanent part of the English factory scene,
particularly where there are women workers.
Now, I feel that because it is so extremely difficult—you people are
much more experienced in this than I am, and this is just a suggestion
on my part—-because it is so difficult to get public provision of that
kind of assistance to employment, it is possible that industry itself
ought to be approached, and the question of providing that kind of
factory byproduct, so to speak, ought to be discussed with them if they
want to keep women on the job.
If we find out as a result of such discussions that they don’t contem
plate women as a permanent part of their labor force, then we may
have something else to think about. You see, one problem certainly
leads to another.
The last point I want to make is that I was considerably impressed
by the great need for facts about what is going on. I have already
illustrated to you by a few quotations from people I know—and I
could have also quoted myself, I may say, in my ignorance of the sub
ject—that the actual situation is not known with respect to wages,
working conditions, the problem of night work, or the very limited
amount of legislation that apparently actually exists. That, of course,
11 have since learned that the Women’s Bureau and the Children’s Bureau do not favor
such nurseries because environmental conditions near factories are frequently not favor
able, and because changes in the mother’s employment and factory close-downs lead to dis
continuous attendance at a nursery by the child. Support of community-wide day-care
centers by local industries is preferred.

is where an organization like the Women’s Bureau provides an in
valuable service.
Now, I am not so naive as to think, I hope, that facts ever convinced
a legislature, or for that matter ever convinced the public. The more
facts you have the more sleepy they get listening to you. But the
leiteiation of a fact often helps quite a lot. So let’s remember that
and not give up on the facts just on the grounds that facts are not
persuasive.

February 1 7 Evening Session
Assistant Secretary of Labor, John W. Gibson, Presiding
CONFERENCE ADDRESSES

Centennial of the Woman’s Movement, Hon. William H. Stevenson
Women’s Status—Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, C. Mildred Thompson
The Idea Takes Root, Lisa Sergio

John W. Gibson, Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of Labor,
was chairman of the February 17 evening session, to which the public was
invited. Mr. Gibson warmly welcomed the members of the conference and its
guests. He commended the purpose of the conference and spoke of its wide
representation, referring to both the many different parts of the country from
which the delegates came and to the diversity of their organizations’ interests
and activities; he spoke of the concrete values to be derived from their exchange
of ideas and experiences.
Representing the Department of Labor as a whole, Mr. Gibson stated that it
deals with the problems and forwards the welfare of all workers, and that all
its various Divisions and Bureaus are therefore concerned to be of assistance to
working women and women’s organizations, although the Womens Bureau is
the agency having specially designated responsibility for developing policy to
promote the welfare of women workers.
Mr. Gibson paid tribute to the movement whose centennial was being cele
brated and expressed the hope and belief that new goals would be as successfully
sighted and pursued.

CENTENNIAL OF THE WOMAN’S MOVEMENT
Honorable William H. Stevenson, Ranking Member of House Post Office and
Civil Service Committee

T was just a century ago this July, while attending the annual meet
ing of the Friends Society of western New York, that four women
concluded to have a conference of the women of that State at
Seneca Falls for the purpose of telling the world their grievances.
Thus the first woman’s rights movement was horn.
Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia, a leader among the Friends or
Quakers, was visiting at the home of her sister, Martha Wright.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, formerly of Boston, had gone west to make her
new home in Seneca Falls. These three and Mary Ann McClintock
put their idea into action and set a convention for Wednesday and
Thursday, the 19th and 20th days of July 1848.
The man who owned the town newspaper, the Seneca County
Courier, must have been favorably impressed by the appeal of those

785372°—48-

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four pioneer women, because it is said he did not charge the ladies
for space in the Courier for the following notice appearing on Sunday,
July 16:
WOMAN’S RIGHTS CONVENTION
A convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights
of woman will be held in the Wesleyan Chapel at Seneca Falls on Wednesday and
Thursday, the 19th and 20th of July, commencing at 10 o’clock a. m.
During the first day the meeting will be exclusively for women, who are
earnestly invited to attend.
The public generally are invited to be present on the second day, when Lucretia
Mott, of Philadelphia, and other ladies and gentlemen will address the convention.

Those ladies did not have the background of world travel and the
international, economic, and political experience that our friend Frieda
Miller has, who is one of the leaders of your conference here in Wash
ington today. But they did think of the causes of the American
-Revolution and other grievances expressed by our founding fathers
in the Declaration of Independence. So Lucretia and Elizabeth,
Mary and Martha, those four pioneers of the woman’s movement, drew
upon the Declaration of Independence as a model for the foundation
of their program of action and resolution.
On Wednesday morning, July 19,1848, men and women on foot and
horseback and by horse and carriage, scores of them, arrived at the
door of the Wesleyan Church—to find the door locked. But the
women were undaunted. A young professor from Yale College was in
the crowd. He climbed through a window of the church—fortunately
left unlocked. The professor gaining entrance by way of the window
then unlocked the door of the church from the inside, and the crowd
of men and women, making up that first convention of the women’s
rights movement, soon filled the church.
The women had not intended to have their husbands, and the other
men who had accompanied them to the church in a spirit of curiosity,
take any part in the convention. But inasmuch as it was a man who
had gained entrance to the church when the women found themselves
locked out, helpless and unable to convene, they then and there decided
to let their friends of the opposite sex join with them in the meeting.
In a prayerful attitude around the altar of the church the women
concluded that the moment had arrived when the men should help
them in their mission of bringing to the attention of the world the
plight that woman was in.
And so it happened that the first convention of the women’s rights
movement was presided over by a man, James Mott, husband of Lu
cretia, who it is said made a very impressive chairman as he presided
over the meetings, tall and dignified in his Quaker costume. Mary
McClintock was named secretary of the convention. Lucretia Mott
recited the objects of the meeting. A law student, Samuel Tillman,
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read from English and American law certain statutes reflecting the
legal status of women, setting forth the “charity and mercy shown by
men toward their wives,” protecting them in their civil rights and
taking over their property after marriage.
This conference of the Women’s Bureau will be interested in the
resolutions adopted by that convention. Some of them read as follows:
Resolved, That woman is man’s equal—was intended to be so by tlie Creator;
and the highest good of the race demands that she be recognized as such.
Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard
to the laws under which they live; that they may no longer publish their degra
dation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position—nor their
ignorance by asserting that they have all the rights they want.
Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of be
havior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required
of men; and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on
both man and woman.
Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often
brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a
very ill grace from those who encourage by their attendance her appearance on
the stage, in the concert, or in feats at the circus.
Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to them
selves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Thus was created the nucleus of the woman-suffrage movement,
which resulted years later in the adoption of the nineteenth amend
ment to the Constitution of the United States, giving women the
right to vote.
The suffrage resolution was the only declaration that was not unani
mously adopted at the Seneca Falls convention. The women were
not quite certain that the suffrage idea would be accepted by women
universally throughout the country. But at the very moment they
were about to falter it was a Negro and a former slave—the great
Negro exponent of freedom and emancipation, a man who has gone
down in history as one of the greatest Negroes in the world, Frederick
Douglas, editor of the North Star, a weekly newspaper, devoted to
the cause of freedom—who rose on that occasion and delivered one of
the greatest orations advocating the freedom of women and their right
to vote that has ever been spoken by a man.
It is said of Frederick Douglas that he had such great powers of
eloquence he captivated his auditors and never failed to bring home
to their hearts the cause which he pleaded. He was a polished gentle
man, with a voice that was full and sonorous. He was dignified, with
out pretension, and a man of lofty reason. It is recorded of the elo
quence of Frederick Douglas that his was the kind of eloquence that
issued from the depth of his soul as from a spring, rolling along in
copious floods, sweeping all before it, overwhelming by its force, more
dazzling and more thundering than the bolt which leaps from crag
to crag.

At that historical moment when the women of Seneca Falls were
undecided whether to launch the cause of the women’s suffrage move
ment, it is significant that it was through the effort and the eloquence
of a former slave who, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, inspired and
encouraged the pioneers of the Woman’s Movement at their first con
vention to adopt the suffrage declaration.
The declaration was signed by 100 men and women of the convention.
This struck a responsive chord in the hearts of women everywhere.
The Seneca Falls conference passed a final declaration maintaining:
We shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our objective.
We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national legis
latures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope
this convention will be followed by a series of conventions embracing every
part of the country.

Sounds very much like a resolution that might be passed by the
Conference of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor today,
doesn’t it.
I am informed that there are today at this Women’s Bureau con
ference representatives from 25 States of the United States, from the
District of Columbia and several foreign countries, representing 70
different women’s organizations. Ladies, I congratulate you.
There is in our Nation’s Capitol a monumental shrine erected in
marble, the rock of ages, dedicated to the founders of the Woman
Movement of the World. It is the first monument of women to women,
presented and executed by a woman.
This monumental shrine to women everywhere is the work of the
sculptress, Adelaide Johnson. It is composed of the three great
pioneers and founders of the woman movement, Lucretia Mott, Susan
B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This monument was pre
sented to the women of America by the National Woman’s Party. It
was accepted by Speaker Gillette of the House of Representatives in
the name of the women of the Nation, and was unveiled in the rotunda
of the National Capitol on the anniversary of the birth of Susan B.
Anthony on February 21, 1921, in an imposing ceremony attended by
thousands of people, at which more than 8,500 persons were unable
to gain entrance to the Capitol, so keen was the interest on that occa
sion.
I hope every one of the delegates to this conference will visit the
shrine in the National Capitol while here to pay honor to the Woman
Movement.
In the words of the sculptress, Adelaide Johnson:
This monument was not made for entertainment, but as an immortal record of
the mightiest thing in the evolution of humanity that has taken place since the
dawn of mind in the brute. It was at Seneca Falls, in 1848, that began the first
movement to succeed. That did not die, but grew, until for the first time in

human history a cause reached every country, and expanded to every field of
endeavor.
No statement can be complete without including the three initiators of the
women’s movement, Lueretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony. These three form a unique historic unit in the nature of a trinity,
the one of which could not have done her work without the other. They became
the embodiment of an idea. Of this trinity, Susan B. Anthony, peerless as an
erect monolith reaching skyward out on the desert, whither humanity might
journey as to a shrine, will forever stand alone, at the end of an age that pro
duced her and her great contemporaries. Let me say that the National Woman’s
Party in their instrumentality in placing this monument in our Capitol, where
they who have rendered signal service to the Nation are admitted, were in that
act placing an everlasting jewel in their own crown of service.

When you view this shrine to the Woman Movement you will note
the idea and the purpose of the sculptress Adelaide Johnson to picture
the three founders of the Woman Movement, Lueretia Mott, Susan B.
Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as a trinity, as an ideal rising
out of the desert “peerless as an erect monolith reaching skyward.”
And when you go hack to your homes, to your desks, to your work—
contemplate the ideals of those pioneer women who met in the first con
vention of the Woman Movement at Seneca Falls a hundred years ago.
Think of the obstacles they had to overcome, which they met and which
they conquered. Then gird yourselves with the inspiration of victory,
and say to the world: Our mission shall be accomplished.
Now, ladies of the conference, you are about to hear one of the lead
ing exponents of woman’s rights in the world today, a distinguished
educator, writer, and lecturer, the dean of Yassar College. She was
the only woman member of the United States delegation to the Con
ference of Allied Ministers of Education in London in 1944, whose
report of that conference has been published by the Foreign Policy
Association. In 1945 she was again in London as a delegate and repre
sentative of the United States at the conference that drafted the con
stitution for UNESCO. Continuing her activity and influence in edu
cation, she has accepted the chair at the University of Georgia as
consultant in education and professor of history. She is a writer of
national and international acclaim. She has written books on south
ern history, among which are: Reconstruction in Georgia, and Carpet
baggers in the United States Senate.
I now have the distinct pleasure and high honor to present to you
the speaker of the evening, Dr. C. Mildred Thompson, dean of Vas
sal' College, who will address you on the subject, AVomen’s Status—
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

WOMEN’S STATUS YESTERDAY, TODAY
TOMORROW
A Chapter in the History of Freedom, 1848-1948
C. Mildred Thompson, Dean, Vassar College

I call this a chapter in ther history of freedom because it seems that
the development of rights of women in this past century is only one
important episode among many in the long-continuing struggle for
human freedom, for greater freedom. It is another chapter in the
advance of the fundamental principles of our western civilization
which received form and durable expression in the Declaration of In
dependence, in the establishment of the young Republic in this country,
and in the principles of the French Revolution. Of the creed which
stirred the revolution in France—liberty, equality, fraternity—only
the first two have been dynamic ideas to us in America. We have
directed our efforts toward more, liberty, toward greater equality,
but we have least understood and valued fraternity. Eighteen hundred
and forty-eight was a significant year, a year of revolutionary move
ments for freedom on the Continent of Europe where there was stir
ring of 1 iberal ideas throughout the western world. In France it took
the form of a republican movement, and in Germany it broke down in
the abortive attempts at liberalism in the various German states. That
movement, liberalism, is still to be achieved in Germany.
In this chapter on human freedom my fundamental thesis is that
the status of women is to be regarded in each stage as part of the total
social and cultural movement of the time. It is a distortion of mean
ing to think of the movement for women’s rights solely or primarily as
a movement for women, of women, by women. It must be taken in
its wholeness. It is one phase of changing society, one aspect of the
continuing struggle for greater freedom of the individual—all indi
viduals ; for equality among persons—all persons. To say, as we must,
that even in this country after a hundred years there are still limita
tions upon the liberty of women which do not restrict men, or to
recognize that we are far from achieving an ideal of equality among
men and women, does not give us reason for saying that no progress
has been made in these past hundred years or that we have failed in
the struggle for women’s rights which had its dramatic formulation
in the mid-nineteenth century.
We can justly say that complete equality, the aim of the women
who met at Seneca Falls, has not been reached. But can we say, as
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did a distinguished head of a college for women in a speech at Dallas
a year ago, that “their real goal, equality of status between men and
women, may well be as far oil as it ever wTas”? A student of history,
to arrive at such a conclusion, must have checked his history at the
gate. He must have set aside his customary method of examining
evidence and of measuring achievement in relation to the whole process
of social change. When we look ahead we may still be far off from
the goal upon which our hopes are set; but if we look behind, we can
see the many measured miles from where we were in'1848 to where
we are in 1948. That look behind gives hope and courage to press on
the road ahead.
Let us then look back upon some of the signposts of these measured
miles. Our starting point can be taken from the program of that
first Convention for Women’s Rights, in 1848, as drawn up in their
Declaration of Sentiments. With freedom as their aim, it was not
unsuitable that Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the others
should take the Declaration of Independence as their model, in setting
forth to a candid world their grievances against the tyranny of man.
“All men and women are created equal”—that was their foremost
assumption. Violations of this principle in legal and political dis
qualification were the subjects of the first 4 of the 15 articles of the
Declaration. Suffrage was denied to woman. Rights to control her
own property, to the guardianship of her own children were denied
to woman. As the Declaration states—“He (man) has made her, if
married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.”
The first of these abuses to be removed by law came by the security
of property rights to married women. The first law to grant this safe
guard to women, preceding the organized agitation for women’s
rights, passed in Mississippi as early as 1839. In 1848 New York
adopted such a law, and this set the pattern which was followed by
numerous other States in the next few years. The movement ad
vanced rapidly so that the right of a married woman to control her
own property, to dispose of it by will, to make contracts, came to be
generally established by law in the different States. And the same
may be said of the right of equal guardianship of children in a ma
jority of the States.
The achievement of the right to vote came only after a prolonged
and hard-fought struggle. The last gun was fired in 1920 with the
ratification of the 19th Amendment. Nineteen twenty thus became
a signal year in the achievement of women’s political rights. It is
indeed a high light, a great high-voltage beacon in the past 100 years.
In this country as in England, the last steps toward the victory were
hastened by the proof women gave of their capacities for patriotic
service in World War I. They proved that they were worthy
citizens, that they could bear their part in war, and proved that their

part was bigger and more varied than previously conceived. They
were recognized as worthy to be admitted into that Democracy which
President Wilson eloquently expressed as the hope of the world.
By 1920, the women of Seneca Palls, had they been alive, would
have seen their chief aims attained, at least by statute. But they
would not have been deceived, any more than we, in thinking that
their hopes for complete equality were truly fulfilled. The achieve
ment of the right to vote was indeed a great step forward in the
progress of the rights of women, although the suffrage did not ac
complish all that its advocates claimed. Nor did it bring the evils
which its opponents foretold. One thing it did accomplish, however,
is of no mean importance. It gave to women a sense of dignity and
of self-respect as citizens. It has been a great educative force to
women. It has made them become less illiterate in the affairs of
their own community and it has stimulated their knowledge and their
concern in world interests.
These three steps forward, all in the nature of the extension of
legal and property rights, had been achieved by the end of the first
quarter of this century. Another great field for advance was edu
cation. The Declaration of 1818 noted that women were denied
thorough education—colleges were closed to them. There were then
only few opportunities for thorough education. Lucy Stone, one of
the pioneers for women’s rights, was a graduate of Oberlin, coedu
cational from its beginning. In the 1830’s there was a distinct aware
ness of needs of better education for women, and it was in this decade
that several seminaries, not possibly of full collegiate rank, gave better
education for women than was previously available. One of those
was in the South, Wesleyan, at Macon, Ga.; Mary Lyon drove forward
at Mount Holyoke; Frances Willard at Troy; and there was Elmira,
also in New York State. But these institutions were far from pro
viding for women opportunities for education equal to the best then
available to their brothers.
It was not until 1865 and the opening of Vassal* that a college with
lich curriculum, adequately equipped faculty, and generous endow
ment, comparable to the highest standards of the best colleges for
men, was available to women. So successful was this venture that the
pattern was followed in the next 10 years and after by the establish
ment of other colleges of like type—Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr,
also Bade 1 life and Barnard, adjuncts of two great universities. These
indicated the great demand by women for higher education. The
same movement appeared in England with the establishment of the
women’s colleges at Cambridge and at Oxford at about the same time.
Today there are many colleges, separate colleges for women, with
standards equal to the best provided for men, and the universities of
the country now admit women to study not only as undergraduates but
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in most of the professional schools as well. Still it is far from the
truth to say that equality in educational opportunities prevails. Some
law schools, some medical schools, still exclude women. Others ad
mit them under more, restricted terms than those governing the ad
mission of men. In one library of a great university, women have only
limited privileges. They may work in a secluded room but do not have
full, free access to library usage as do men in that great and notable
institution.
Of course as we all know there is no real coeducation in this coun
try. The universities, coeducational in name, are almost completely
taught by men professors. True there are some women on the fac
ulties, but usually in minor positions, assistants or secretaries, not
professors or chairmen of departments. The equipment provided for
women students also is generally inferior. When a new gymnasium
was built at a university, the old gym, out of date and too inadequate
for men students, was generously turned over to the women students.
Great changes have taken place in the last few years as a result of the
war, and now we see not infrequently that men, generally only a few
men in proportion to the total number of students, are admitted to
some of the women’s colleges. As far as I have observed, they exist in
very much the same position of inferiority in academic and social
privileges to which women have long been accustomed.
It is a matter of fact, one of which we women are not proud, that
in the academic world, in the world of research, there are few dis
tinguished women of first-rate achievement. Wo have noted for a long
time in the meetings of professional societies, scientists, historians,
economists, very rarely is a paper of notable research presented by a
woman. We do not take an equal part with men in productive scholar
ship or in high academic position. Occasionally there is a mountain
peak of distinction like Madame Curie in the field of scientific research,
but as far as I know today there is only one woman among many nota
ble men distinguished in the field of nuclear physics. Other forces
than the tyranny of men must account for this limitation upon full pro
ductivity of women in the advanced fields of education.
There has been a movement, slow but growing in pressure within
the last few years, to make the curriculum for women students essen
tially different from that offered to men. I would think from my ex
perience in education for women that this is distinctly a step back
ward, not forward. I see no objection whatever to a curriculum
which includes with other courses of general and special knowledge
of the world of man and of nature, courses which deal particularly
with the development of children, with the problems of the family,
with household economics, or domestic architecture. It would seem
to me that these have rightful place and they are now accepted in
colleges of high standard, if the courses themsedves in substance and

in method are as thoroughgoing and as serious as other courses in
science or the arts. These courses should be available to women and
also to men. Let the individual choose according to his needs and
purposes. A special curriculum for feminine education in this mid
twentieth century with all the changes that have taken place in social
life would be just as reactionary and out of relationship to modern
society and to the preparation of women for modern life as would be
a special masculine education for men if introduced in Yale, Harvard,
or Princeton. Should men be deprived of the chance to study and
to specialize in child psychology if they wish, because children are the
peculiar sphere of women? Should principles of nutrition be barred
to men, because the feeding of the family is women’s work? Should
boys and men in school and college not be allowed to study courses
in literature and the arts simply because in some places they have
been known as “sissy” courses? The absurdity of such a view today,
I think, is the answer to these newly pressed demands which have
their view backward instead of forward in preparing the education
of the future.
The arts have always had more doors open to women than other
interests, but only on the stage have women in large numbers risen
to highest eminence equal to the distinction of men. There have been
many actresses among the greatest on the stage, but no great woman
playwright. There are gifted artists, poets, musicians, but women as a
rule do not occupy the highest places, or at least if they do they are
rare exceptions not comparable in numbers or in brilliance of achieve
ment to men in these fields.
There may be many explanations, and of these I shall hazard only
a scant attempt at analysis. I would say first of all that I do not
believe it is the tyranny of men that keeps women down from topplace achievement. Nor, in the second place, do I think it is biological
differences which account for inferior success. There was a large
bulk of writings in the 50’s and 60’s to the effect that woman’s frail
physical constitution would be weakened by the manly labor of the
study of the classics, of calculus, or serious study of the arts. Of
course a little needlework, a little painting on china, a little music
for the delight of the home as accomplishments would do no harm
to female delicacy. The argument of biological inferiority has long
been silenced. At the present time the chief proponent for the case
of inferiority of woman to man comes, not from the politicians or
lawyers or from the biologists, but from the newer schools of the
psychoanalysts and especially the pseudo-psychoanalysts. Some of
this last group maintain that the struggle of women to be equal rather
than to maintain differences has led to the frustration of the entire
sex. As some would say and have said, women are sick. Society is
sick, because women are not content to specialize in their femininity.
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This is but another phase of “children, church, kitchen” as the true
pursuits of women cloaked in the semantics of newer, more highsounding, semiscientific terms.
We see today a very real reaction against greater equality of men and
women which would seem to me costly and wasteful retrogression, in
placing emphasis on the separation of spheres rather than the recog
nition of fraternity of interests. It is but another form of isolation
ism. This reactionary movement would go contrary to what seems to
me the most useful direction in modern society, that is, a movement
toward greater cooperation in similar activities. We must be aware
of this movement and be prepared to meet it. The data upon which
these reactionary postulates are based seem to me to come not from the
17 millions of women in this country who are engaged in occupation
but from very limited groups, urban, metropolitan women for the
most part, who have lost the home and who have not found new pur
pose and new interests in the extension of the home into the community.
I have no information upon which to dispute the validity of the data
of some of the psychoanalysts and others. I have not studied the case
histories of the limited number of women who have the time and
the money to frequent the psychoanalyst. But from my observations,
I would raise serious question as to the validity of some of their con
clusions as applied to an entire sex or an entire society. The answer to
their contentions may possibly be found if a book should be published,
equally valid, with the title, Modern Alan, the Lost Sex, A Study in
Continuous Frustration. The summary of such a book might be some
thing like this: Man, who for centuries gloried in his complete domiances over woman in the family and in the State, has suffered irre
trievable loss one by one of all his cherished marks of superiority.
The vote he had is his alone no longer. He could swagger as a soldier
or a sailor, but now he finds also defending his country, and theirs,
WAVES and WACS. He used to have safe refuge when things at
home were not to his liking in the corner saloon where the swinging
door gave him security from troublesome women. But now, when he
seeks comfort at his favorite saloon, who does he find with feet on the
brass rail beside him ? Woman! For long years the barber shop with
its painted pole outside was his resort and his alone. That, too, he has
lost. He used to glory in his short clipped hair and his trousered legs,
but those symbols of maleness, and hence superiority, are no longer
his monopoly. And so it goes. No wonder man is a lost sex sick with
frustration. But no—hope is in sight for his recovery. Another book
just published, eagerly sought by despondent man, has already become
a best seller. From it man has learned that he, too, has a sex life.
This lost sex may be found.
I for one do not take much stock in the battle of the sexes, not at
the present time certainly. We have talked about the desirability of a

moral equivalent for war. Why should we not find some intelligent
equivalent, some substitution through cooperation, not antagonism;
mutual understanding and sympathy instead of crimination and re
crimination between nations and between sexes. There are two sexes,
but there is one society. Nothing better has been said in the matter
than was said by Shelley, 130 years ago: “Can man be free if woman
be a slave?” And it is just as true today as it was in 1817 when
Shelley wrote “The Revolt of Islam.”
Little did the women of 1848 sense the great changes that the revolu
tion in industrial society would bring in women’s occupations. Among
their charges against the tyranny of man was—“He has monopolized
nearly all the profitable employments.” The industrial revolution in
this country was still young in 1848 when this was written, although
even in that decade-, available documents indicate, there were more
than one hundred different occupations in which women were em
ployed. Not only the natural growth of industry but the abnormal
stimulus of war needs brought rapid extension of employment for
women in the following decades. By 1870 one-seventh of all the women
over 16 in this country were engaged in gainful pursuits; by 1900,
more than one-fifth. By the beginning of this century women were
strongly established in industry, in occupations outside the home, for
the activities of the home had by this time largely gone out of the home
into the machine world and organized industry. This transformation
of home and industry is too well known to a group such as this to need
further enlargement. To the unenlightened the home is represented as
a kind of sanctuary which woman voluntarily and wantonly abandoned
for the factory and the marketplace.
We would do well to distinguish between home and household.
“Home is where the heart is.” Yes, the home is properly a center of
emotional relationships, whereas the household is a physical habitat
which in the twentieth century would be almost unrecognizable from
our prototype of a century ago. A family household in the city apart
ment house is worlds apart and centuries distant from the farmhouse
or the spacious small-town dwelling of most American families of the
early nineteenth century. This change was not the result of the de
mand of women. The forces of industrial and economic change, and
apart from any earnest desire on the part of women, were responsible.
Some women may like the change and some may prefer the old wavs.
But like it or not, the industrial revolution has continued to revolution
ize our manner of living, and the end of the revolution is not yet. In
dustry needs women, and women need gainful occupation for their
subsistence. Occupations outside the home are like magnets drawing
steadily upon the women who are made more and more idle as their
cooking and the processing of foods, the making of clothes and the
washing of clothes, the teaching of children, have gone out of the
48

individual household into mass industry. Hence come our 17 millions
of women today and 20 millions and more in the wartime, in gainful
occupations. There are still women idle, women left in some house
holds with no children to care for or with others paid to do the job for
them—women idle because there are no household arts left to give
them a sense of creative productivity in the household—women who
have not entered into useful occupations, voluntarily or gainfully,
outside the household. These are the women who have not made suc
cessful adjustment from the old conditions of society to the new. and
these are the ones more than others who breed sources of frustration
and provide material for the doctors of sick souls.
(Perhaps it is not entirely a joke but a social case history which ap
peared recently in the Nem Yorker, told of a new apartment dweller
who was being assisted in neighborly fashion by the lady in the apart
ment across the hall. The newcomer was told where to find the near
est grocer, the best butcher. She was given the address of the baker
and the laundryman, and finally the new tenant asked her helpful
neighbor, “And what is the address of your psychiatrist, please?”)
In any rehearsal of the steps forward in the position of women, even
a brief one such as this, we must not overlook the great force for the
development of women which has come through women’s organizations.
They are a sign of women’s increasing freedom and self-confidence.
They have proved a strong force in the education of women and should
be recognized with distinctive place in the various media of adult edu
cation. There would seem to be scarcely a woman who does not belong
to at least one organization. The church was of course the first organ
ization in which women learned the power of associated effort, and
from the special church guilds and circles of women grew other asso
ciations for humanitarian service. We may laugh if we will at the kind
of club women which Helen Hokison draws with her not too gentle
satire, but the club ladies of that type bent solely on their own some
what trivial cultural entertainment are but a fragment in the world of
women’s organizations. These today include not merely the clubs of
leisure-time activities, but the great associations of political force and
civic responsibility, such as the League of Women Voters, and the pow
erful and constructive trade-union groups. I would name organiza
tions such as these as assuming conspicuous place on this road of pro
gress in the last hundred years.
With all of this progress, all of this greater freedom of women,
greater opportunity for choice and wider activities, we cannot blink at
some facts which are still disconcerting. Women in this hundred years
have not yet risen to distinction equal to that of men in arts, in the pro
fessions, in public service. There are, of course, today notable women
in high political offices, and it has been the custom in the last few years
for the administration to appoint one woman on each of several im

portant public commissions. But notice, please, that it is generally one
woman, not five or six among a dozen members. This continued fail
ure to assume full positions of power remains a problem. It is a sur
prise and a source of disappointment to many women—and to some
men—that in these 30 years almost since women attained the franchise,
so few women hold public office high or low, and so few even have stood
for election to office. We doubtless all know women fully qualified
who wrnuld make excellent members of our city council or of the county
board of supervisors. We know women we would like to see in our
State legislatures. And perhaps we can th ink of some who might make
better governors than some governors we have known. It would not
be difficult for us to think of women we should like to see in the United
States Senate or the House of Representatives. Perhaps some of
us have in mind a woman who is better qualified for the eminent posi
tion of President of the United States than several, or any one of the
candidates who now put themselves forth. No. It is not that women
lack the ability, the training, or the public spirit for office. Their
absence is due, rather, to social pressures, to the continuance of a mode
of thinking which has not caught up with the actual conditions of our
time.
It may be that much of the force of women in society today is still
indirect rather than direct. In this way it is a force difficult to meas
ure by evident accomplishment. How much of the achievement of a
great composer, for instance, is due to the creative force of some
woman, through her giving inspiration, protection, understanding, or
criticism? Clara Schumann, for instance, a great, brilliant pianist,
had to forego and willingly gave up the use of the one piano in their
household in Leipzig so that her husband Robert might use it all the
time while he was composing his First Symphony. The kind of in
tense concentration needed for composition, for great productivity
m any of the arts, is rarely achieved by a woman. Society still makes
demands directly upon her from which she cannot withdraw; or if
she did, it would be at a price of ruthlessness which would itself de
stroy her gift. In the business and industrial world how can we meas
ure success and the contributing force of women behind the giants
of finance and the organizers of industry? We may have a suspicion
that some of this mastery of captains of industry comes from the
imagination, the steady resourcefulness of some woman, very often
perhaps from that too little recognized Executive Secretary. Did you
happen to see Ruth Draper in her monologue, Three Women and
Mr. Clifford? If you did, you will know what I mean by the con
tributing force of the Executive Secretary, unknown, unsung,
unrewarded.
The incompleteness—and I say advisedly incompUtmegs^-not Jailure—of woman’s attainments thus far, I believe, does not derive from
50

biological difference of function or from predestined mental and emo
tional fixities and inferiorities. It is due, rather, to environmental
causation and to traditions of culture. Modes of acceptance and of re
jection in social behavior may not create genius, but they can thwart
the effective expression of genius. Social pressures change and ideolo
gies of society cause shifts in acceptable standards. The development
of women’s powers, the conception of their rights, and the measure
of their contributions cannot be wisely evaluated apart from the whole
of society and the forces which control it. These forces are not im
mutable, but are constantly changing. For centuries woman was
only a sex. As persons we women are still young. Who, then, would
dare to predict what the next hundred years may bring forth ? When
we contemplate where we were in 1848, and where we are today in
1948, we can salute the women of Seneca Falls a century ago. We
can say to Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “You pointed
our direction. We are still on our way.”

THE IDEA TAKES ROOT
Lisa Sergio

In a little Wesleyan Chapel at Seneca Falls, N. Y., in July 1848,
100 years ago, a handful of American women organized what we
now commonly look upon as “the women’s great rebellion.” This
evening you have heard much about the Seneca Falls convention and
about the amazing document heatedly discussed and finally accepted
by that gathering. It was a document which, in bitter words, listed
the wrongs done to women under the rights which men had given
to America with the Declaration of Independence.
In 1848, when the Women’s Eights resolution was made known, it
drew criticism as bitter as the words in which it was couched, and the
criticism has endured, to some degree, down the decades, on the part
of those who considered it an instigation to antagonism between the
sexes and an unfair indictment of man as a tyrant. Nevertheless, the
Seneca Falls declaration marked the turning point in the history of
American womanhood and initiated the struggle which eventually
won for it the right to vote on equal terms with the men. The meeting
in the Wesleyan Chapel, that summer day 100 years ago, was fraught
with drama, but the impact of its significance might not have so fully
hit the outside world if, almost by accident, the story of this unique
convention had not been reported on the electric telegraph wire, which
was then a new device used only by a few newspapers.
Editors with a flair for news found the document sensational, and
used it chiefly as a target for ridicule and jokes. But whether it was
praise or attack, ridicule or pity, the document brought forth reac
tions from every side, and, while remaining for a long, long time a sub
ject for heated controversy, continued to be the banner under which
women in all parts of the land fought on, until suffrage was achieved.
What were the events that inspired Elizabeth Cady Stanton to plan
and call that fateful meeting ? Let us look back upon a few—perhaps
the least remembered—from which emerge the issues that women, even
then, knew to be vital if this American way of life was to become an
enduring reality. Indeed it is important to record today, as we
celebrate this hundredth anniversary, that the reason which drove
these brave and brilliant women into the fight for suffrage and for
other equal rights was not a selfish desire to shake off the inferior status
which society had assigned to them, and thus to enjoy greater privi
leges and freedoms: The reason was deeper and greater, its roots lay
in the very core of civilization’s progress.
52

-v
*

In the early decades of the nineteenth century the machine was mov
ing in upon America. In its wake came changes; some good, some bad
unless controlled and counterbalanced. The women whose names have
been pronounced here tonight, Stone, Mott, Stanton, Anthony, and
the others, saw the changes, feared the evils, felt powerless to make
their voices heard in offering correctives. After trying, singly and
together, in various ways, to bring a new logic into man s approach to
the new problems of their time, they finally concluded that oidy by
achieving a legal right to speak as citizens would their voices be heard.
And so they fought for suffrage.
Curiously enough it was a woman who, to a great extent, was re
sponsible for bringing about those changes in the economic and
social conditions of the America of the nineteenth century which pro
vided the incentive for the feminist drives of later years. The widow
of General Nathaniel Greene, who managed a large plantation in
Georgia after her husband’s death, first conceived the idea of the cotton
gin. Eli Whitney put the idea into mechanical form, but she even
shared his royalties, a fact which proves the “maternity” of the
invention.
The cotton gin began to bring women out of the home. The old
looms were laid aside, and linen goods became all but obsolete. The
women began to operate the machines, and the machines were in
factories. This revolutionized the entire significance of the work
done hitherto by women. At home they spun and wove, as well as
baked and tended the household. If, after clothing the family, they
worked at the loom for a wage, the wage was a pittance. In the fac
tory, too, it remained a pittance, even in such places as Lowell, Mass.,
where nearly all the spindles and looms in the town were manned by
women. Woman was cheap labor. This was one evil of the ma
chine age. Unwittingly a woman had brought it on, wittingly and
bravely other women would combat it. And they did.
In the year 1853 many Americans were aware of the low esteem
in which the teaching profession was held. Teachers were under
paid, and many of them, chiefly women, were not sufficiently educated
themselves to be able to teach others. An educational convention
was held at Rochester in that year and Susan B. Anthony attended it.
Patiently she sat by while men discussed the fact that teachers were
considered to be far beneath lawyers, ministers, or doctors. They
wondered why, they beat around the bush. Suddenly Susan Anthony
stood up in the audience and asked to speak. This was without prece
dent as a demonstration of audacity and bad taste. Ida Harper, re
counting the fantastic episode, describes the consternation into which
this gesture threw the men. For one-half hour they argued whether
she should be heard: There was mockery in the tone of President
Davies of West Point—a gaudy character in blue coat, full dress, and
785372°—48-

S°ld buttons—when he asked: “What will the lady have?” “I wish,
Sir, to speak to the question under discussion.” After a much de
bated vote, winning by a small minority, Susan Anthony was told
“The lady can speak.” And speak she did:
It seems to me, gentlemen, that none of you quite comprehends
the cause of the disrespect of which you complain. Do you not see
that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer
minister, or doctor, but has ability to be a teacher, that every man of
you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that lie has no
more brains than a woman? Thus men must compete with the cheap
labor of women. Would you exalt your profession, exalt those who
labor with you. Would you make it more lucrative, increase the
salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our
future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen.” A deep, uncomfor
table silence greeted her words and she resumed her seat, Three men
eventually walked down the aisle to offer their congratulations, but
the lasting comment on Miss Anthony’s words—apparently the only
pertinent and intelligent words heard at the convention—came from
the editor of the Rochester Democrat: “Whatever the schoolmasters
might think of Miss Anthony, it was evident that she hit the nail on
the head.”
I igliting for suffrage was no self-seeking endeavor—the women
needed more hammers with which to hit more nails on the head.
The logic of these women soon told them that fighting single-handed
was a hopeless affair. Long before the Rochester Convention, which
marked a date on the calendar of woman’s rise in society, women had
formed clubs for pious and philanthropic reasons. But the first wellestablished woman’s club was started in 1833 and, like Susan An
thony’s stupendous breaking of precedent, found its incentive in the
problem of education. It was founded in Jacksonville, Ilk, and was
called the Ladies’ Educational Association. It spent money to give
women a better education for social rather than for society reasons.
In 1 hiladelphia in that same year of 1833 women, with even more
audacity than their peers in Illinois, formed a club with a definite
political purpose: the fight against slavery. The issue was danger
ously hot, but the women were geared against burns, for only 4 years
later they called a national convention of “American Anti-Slavery
Women.” It went fairly well. In 1838 they called a second one, and
then the hot issue burst into flames.
Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, was by public consent dedi
cated to liberty. Here the convention was held. Speeches were heard
for abolition, and the ills of slavery were discussed for 2 days. The
third day was to mark the climax, with a resolution to be voted. Mobs,
roaring against abolition, pounded on the doors to gain admission
and silence the speakers. The doors remained closed to their fists,
54

but the mob smashed the windows. The police of Philadelphia, out
in the streets, stood by and watched. Not a hand was raised to stop
the shouting, violent mob. And then, over the pounding and the
crashing of glass a hideous yell was heard: “Burn the hall!” Men
begged the women to forego their evening session, but the women
after calm deliberation decided to hold it. Said the manager of the
building: “A more dignified, calm, and intrepid body of persons was
never seen.”
When the afternoon session was concluded, the women serenely
faced the jeering populace and came out. They walked home amid
insults and execrations. That night the mob burned down the hall.
In Philadelphia, cradle of liberty, the authorities refused to let the
women move to Temperance Hall, lest the rioters who believed in
slavery reduce it, too, to ashes.
The women who believed in freedom found a schoolroom which gave
them shelter for the closing session. Anti-slavery was a burning issue,
indeed, the women found. The city authorities were afraid of its
flames. Eventually then it would be necessary for the women to speak
for liberty, not as guests in a hall, but as citizens having the right to
be heard. The enticing idea of suffrage was taking shape, ever so
vaguely, on the flame-streaked horizon.
It was no easy matter to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the year 1840,
but the women who had braved the Philadelphia flames now braved
the waters. The World’s Anti-slavery Conference was taking place
in London, and the United States delegation was headed by William
Lloyd Garrison, from whom the chief speech of the convention was
expected. Henry Stanton brought Elizabeth Cady, his bride, and
other women went as delegates. England had freed the slaves, but
not the women, and the petticoat delegates from America were denied
access to the convention hall.
Protests finally led to a compromise: the women might sit behind
a screen in the gallery and listen to the proceedings. They might not
be heard or seen. William Lloyd Garrison refused to make his speech.
He sat with the American women and shared their silent anger.
As the ship plied its way back to American shores, the logic of the
women drove them on their course. They could not fight for the rights
of humans who were enslaved so long as they had no rights as citizens
of a world striving to be free. Now the goal was clear. It was broad.
Some day, everywhere, women -would have to gain recognition for
their rights. Women now would have to begin the struggle, and the
struggle would have to begin in America. It did.
Eight years were to pass before the strategy for battle was finally
drawn up and made known. Eight years betwTeen the bitter lesson
learned in London and the bitter rebellion launched at Seneca Falls.
Eight fruitful years during which the women who were to work

together for suffrage were working each in her own plot to loosen the
soil in wThich suffrage was to grow.
When the charter that contained the strategy for the fight for
women’s rights was given to the Seneca Falls convention, its 14 griev
ances against the men touched 14 neuralgic spots in the male con
science. And the men, both as groups, religious and otherwise, and as
individuals responded in language as forthright as that adopted by
the charter writers. The document was passed by the convention, but
only by a narrow margin. No selfish, narrow aim could possibly have
justified the scope of the Nation-wide battles to which the strategy
applied. Women sought the right to speak, ballot in hand, not for
their own sakes, not merely in antagonism to male control, but in
order to gain the power whereby to help right the wrongs that man
kind commits against mankind.
After the Seneca Falls meeting, a National Woman’s Eights Asso
ciation was formed, and conventions were held on a regular annual
schedule. At each gathering new ground was broken, new pitfalls
were discovered, new techniques were developed. At most gatherings
some dramatic incident occurred, and once, at Akron, Ohio, in 1851,
drama was wrapped in a cloak of high emotion and picturesque con
trasts.
The convention was being held in a church, and as the first session
opened a tall, gaunt, black woman, clad in gray with a white turban
on her head upon which rested a sunbonnet, marched up the aisle with
the deliberate pace of a queen and sat upon the steps of the pulpit.
Frances Gage, who presided over that convention described her thus:
“Morning, afternoon, and evening exercises came and went, and
through all of these she sat, crouched against the wall on the corner
of the pulpit stairs, her sunbonnet shading her eyes, her elbows on
her knees, her chin resting upon her broad hard palms. She was quiet
and reticent.”
She was so old that she had been born in slavery in New York, but
age, apparently, had made no mark upon her determination. She was
erect when she walked. Her silence was strangely hard, as granite.
The women feared she might want to speak and thereby bring up the
issue of slavery and confuse it with that of suffrage which now had to
i emain alone and to the fore. But she did not ask to speak.
On the second day, Mrs. Gage writes in her reminiscences, ministers
of every denomination had come to speak against the resolutions. God
was invoked to support their contention that it was antireligious to
claim equity for woman. The crowd which jeered and sneered as each
resolution came up, waited expectantly for the final defeat of the
women.
Suddenly the gaunt black woman rose from the pulpit steps. She
asked to speak. A tumult was nipped in the bud by her towering
56

presence. Her voice was low. It spread into the sudden hush and
filled it with awe. She bared her arms and turned the palms of her
hands to the audience. She had ploughed and planted and gathered
into barns, the low voice said. She had borne 13 children and stood
by as each was sold into slavery. No one had comforted her heart
break but God. She stood there, older than time itself, yet without age,
a woman, bigger, stronger, braver indeed by far than the men whose
theological arguments she was destroying with her simple human
facts.
A black finger, bony and gnarled, slowly came forward from her
raised hand and pointed to the minister who had invoked the testimony
of God. “Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can’t have as
much rights as men, ’cause Christ wan’t a woman! Whar did your
Christ come from ? Whar did your Christ come from ? From God and
a woman! Man had nothin’ to do wid Him!”
Applause that rolled like thunder crushed the little man in black,
as the black woman stood against the pulpit steps, her hands raised,
her head held high under the fantastic bonnet, Then she took up
another charge, this time defending Eve herself: “If de fust woman
God ever made was strong enough to turn de world up side down all
alone, dese women tegedder ought to be able to turn it back, and get it
right side up again! Now dey is askin’ to do it, de men better let em !
When the ovation subsided, she was sitting in her corner again, quiet
and reticent. Her hands now rested on her knees and her face was in
the light. Her name was Sojourner Truth. A black woman, so old
she could not count her years, had w7on a battle so young it had no
years to count.

February 18 Morning Session
conference addresses

Working Women—Their Home Obligations

Family Responsibilities of Earning Women, Hazel Kyrk
Social Patterns for Women, the Present and the Prospects, Ordway Tead

FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES OF EARNING WOMEN1
Hazel Kyrk, Professor of Home Economics and Economics, University of
Chidago

T THE latest report there were about 17 million women in the labor
force in the United States. We do not know exactly how many
of these women with a job have home responsibilities appreciable
in amount. We do know, however, that there are great variations
among working women in this respect, as there are among men and
women in the financial responsibility they must assume for the support
of others. Both types of responsibilities vary in the main with marital
and parental status. It is necessary, therefore, to analyze separately
the situation of the single, widowed, divorced, and married women
in the labor force. Generalizations about working women without
such differentiation are not likely to be illuminating.
In 1940 half of the women with jobs were single in spite of the fact
that decade by decade as the school-leaving age has advanced and the
age of marriage has lowered, the relative importance of this marital
group in the labor force has declined. The responsibility that single
women in the working force must assume for housework and care of
children has caused us and probably need cause us little concern. The}'
are a relatively young group. In 1940 more than a fifth were under
20 and more than a half under 25. There was undoubtedly a mother
in the households in which most of them were living. Almost a fourth
were lodgers in 1940 and although about a tenth were labeled “heads”
of households, well over half of these heads were living alone or sharing
their dwelling with an unrelated person. We can be fairly certain
that not more than one in ten of these households of which single
women earners were heads included children.

1 See charts 7 and 8, Appendix IV, in connection with this address.

Concern has long and frequently been expressed, however, con
cerning the financial relation of single women workers to members
of their families in the same household or outside. Investigations have
clearly shown that within certain occupations these workers have
earnings insufficient for self-support at an acceptable level. Some
of these, the more fortunate ones, undoubtedly had their earnings sup
plemented from the earnings, or by the unpaid services, of other family
members. There are also undoubtedly some, both those with earnings
below and those with earnings above an acceptable level, who wholly
or partially support others. Data that unmistakably indicate the
proportion who are partially supported by others or who support
others are difficult to secure. But although we cannot measure with
exactness the extent of either of these situations, the social judgment
about them is fairly well crystallized and our thinking can proceed
on assumptions that are generally agreed upon. It is fairly well
agreed that the full-time earnings of an able-bodied person admitted
to the labor market should be sufficient to maintain her at an acceptable
level without subsidy in any form from family or others. It is also
fairly well agreed that wage rates which will not provide such earnings
should be declared illegal and that we should seek for causes and
correctives.
In the case of those who wholly or partially support others, guiding
principles reflected in public policies are at least inp rocess of crystal
lization. Such actual dependents of single women earners are not
their presumptive dependents; that is, this is not the way society
avowedly wants or expects these persons to be supported. Single
women who are supporting or helping to support a parent or parents,
siblings, or the children of siblings, are the victims of a break-down
in the system defining rights to, or responsibilities for, support. In
our culture, support of children is the parents’ responsibility. If
they cannot or do not meet it, various policies are proposed or in
operation to deal with the situation, none of which involves passing
the responsibility to older children or other relatives. Another
avowed goal of social policy is economically independent old age and,
in lieu of that, public assistance. The care of the ill and the aged is
recognized as a problem we have scarcely begun to attack. Until we
do so successfully, and until we attain our goals with respect to the
economic situation of those too young and those too old to earn, the
burden will fall upon those bound to them by ties of blood and
affection.
If we could be assured that all employed single women were earning
sufficient for self-support at a minimum level and that none had re
sponsibility for the support or care of others, could we dismiss their
economic situation from our minds as the occasion for special concern ?
Single women earners, we should always remind ourselves, are not
60

simply a group of working women. They represent a period in the
economic life history of practically all women. Relatively few now
go directly from school to marriage; larger and larger numbers have
the experience of earning. In 1940 four-fifths of the urban single
women not in schools or institutions were in the labor force. This
period of employment is becoming part of the accepted life pattern.
In one particular, at least, we can say that the employed single women
present no problem. Their presence in the labor force is accepted and
approved. We do not fear that they are neglecting home responsibili
ties, or that their ability to earn will affect adversely the marriage
age or rate. It Is generally agreed that their skills and energies
should be usefully employed and that their social contribution is
greatest in some form of specialized work for pay. Family restraints
upon their employment are increasingly regarded as ill-advised since
some may not marry and some who do may find it necessary later to
enter the labor market. The presumption that the single women shall
earn is practically as well established as that single men shall do so.
We cannot, however, withdraw our attention from single women
earners without raising one further question. Do they suffer from
any special disadvantage in the labor market due to limited prepara
tion or opportunities for employment or advancement? Are their
preparation and opportunities adversely affected by the fact that the
duration of their employment is uncertain and that for many it will
be brief? This situation would not be corrected by “equal pay.”
Nor can “equal” vocational or professional preparation be invoked as
a remedy without examining our presumptions in regard to the whole
life history of women and certainty that our proposal is not incon
sistent with other desired objectives.
The second group of earning women whose economic and domestic
state should be separately examined are the widowed, the divorced,
and those living separately from their husbands. It would be useful
if the facts about the three components of this group were more pre
cisely known since they vary in age and family status. The widows
who make up over half of the group are the oldest; probably less than
a fifth are under 40. The divorced women, probably less than a fifth
of the group, are much younger, probably two-thirds under 40. The
third group are also relatively young, two-thirds under 40. The in
crease in this last group, married women separated from their hus
bands, was a wartime phenomenon as husbands went overseas or to
army camps. It is the women in this group whose separation from
their husbands is permanent with whom we are concerned from a
long-run standpoint.
The family and economic status of many of the younger divorced,
separated, and widowed women is very similar to that of the single.
Their present family responsibilities, their economic history, and prob-

able future have been little affected by their marriage and its disso
lution. That would be true of those who are about the same age as
the single, whose marriage was of short duration, and who have no
children. But there are others, who are in the middle years or beyond,
whose marriage was not of short duration and who do have children. ’
Just the description of this latter group is almost enough to answer
the questions we would raise about them. If they have in effect two
jobs or one and a half, they are at a disadvantage in the labor market.
One scarcely needs to spell out why this is so. As a group they labor
under another disadvantage as compared with single women and men
of the same age. Few among them worked continuously before and
during their marriage. Many have returned to the labor market aftei
an absence of several years. Those whose work before marriage re
quired no special skill or experience will have suffered least in level
of earnings from the discontinuity of their employment. Those who
left a depressed labor market and reentered in a boom area or period
will have felt no adverse results of their absence. But there will be
some whose leaving and return were not so fortunately timed. There
also will be some whose special skills and knowledge will have become
rusty or obsolete.
It is impossible to say exactly how many widowed, divorced, or
separated women earners have children—probably at least a fourth_
or how many of the mothers support or care for their children single
handed. Since most of the mothers are under 40, and in that age
group divorced and separated women outnumber the widowed four
to one, one might assume that the children are partially supported by
the fathers. But since circumstances lessen both the willingness and
ability of the latter to make contributions, this assumption seems less
tenable m the majority of cases.
It is not the intent of our society that widowed or divorced mothers
be the sole support of their dependent children. A legal responsi
bility, often unenforced and unenforcible, rests upon the living father
and a weak and uncertain moral responsibility, weak and uncertain
because behind it there are no strong social sanctions. The “good”
father insures against the risk of death before his children are of
earning age, but none is provided against the risk of separation or
divorce which may have equally adverse effects upon the children
and their mother. Margaret Mead alleges that our arrangements for
providing children with status, security, and support are weak and
def ective as compared with those in other types of social organizations.
J responsibility is limited to two adults, it places the child, she says,
m an indeterminate position economically, socially, and affectionally7
ince the care and support of one or both can be lessened or disappear
vith a single blow. Our attempts to improve the situation through
b * asSumPtlon of soclaI responsibility are shown in the Federal62

State provision of aid to dependent children, survivors’ benefits under
the Social Security law, and provision of institutional or foster-home
care. Complacency disappears when the adequacy of this social pro
vision and the extent of the problem it leaves untouched is examined.
When we turn from the single, widowed, divorced, and separated
to the married women in the labor force, questions concerning their
homes and families are the first that are generally raised. Are they
neglecting, or discharging inefficiently, responsibilities that are theirs
by virtue of their marital and parental status? If they are not, do
they discharge them at the expense of health and leisure? Or have
they reduced their housework burden by alterations in the family mode
of living in ways adverse to family welfare? Or is it possible that
they have found ways of shifting these responsibilities, or better and
more efficient means of discharging them, which should be made avail
able to and adopted by all wives and mothers?
Answers to these and similar questions in regard to married women
who are earners have implications for the much larger group who
are not, a group whose numbers run into the tens of millions. Only
an eighth of the able-bodied married women not in school or institu
tion had jobs in 1940. Are the seven-eighths of the married women
without jobs employing their knowledge and skills to the greatest
social advantage? Does their withdrawal from the labor force make
for a higher level of personal development, child care, and family
living ?
_
Our thinking with respect to married women earners is made difficult
by the fact that we have not clarified our value judgments as in the
case of the single, widowed, and divorced. We agree that the single
should be in the labor market and that their responsibility is for self
maintenance. We agree that the widowed and divorced without
children should earn and that those with children should not single
handed maintain homes and provide money income. With respect to
married women one principle could surely be defended. No restric
tions should be placed upon their freedom to enter a gainful pursuit.
None should be barred from employment unless some are compelled
to take jobs, and the same principle is applied to other workers and
nonworkers.
We cannot analyze the economic situation of married women, earn
ing or not earning, without making explicit another value judgment
that is a constant in our problem. This judgment or assumption is
that people will live in small family groups in independent households.
The moment we assume anything else, husbands and wives or parents
and children separately domiciled, or arrangements for communal liv
ing, we shall have altered the situation entirely. At present the most
pervasive and fixed part of our pattern for living is the independent
household made up increasingly of the nuclear family without other

members related or unrelated. There is no visible tendency for the
household to fall below the minimum set by the size of the nuclear
family, and the way it desires to live continues to be reflected in the
building of separate dwellings equipped with sleeping, dining, cook
ing, and other facilities.
Obviously, a basic question is how great is the work load in a modern
home. What is it now, what could it be reduced to, and what is it
likely to be in the foreseeable future ? For some married women now
earning this is an irrelevant question. Their earnings are so high rela
tive to those of skilled household help that they can hire what is needed.
Among these are the women likely to be publicized as successfully com
bining marriage, children, a home, and a career. Everyone gains and
no one loses under these conditions. We have here, however, no solu
tion of the problem for most married women with jobs, and the propor
tion for whom it is a solution is likely to become smaller if we attain
some goals to which we are committed, viz., greater equality of oppor
tunity for education and employment, Good domestic help on a full
time basis has been a byproduct of an inequality which we are attempt
ing to lessen. The household helpers of the present day constitute,
moreover, an important part of the married women earners with whose
reconciliation of job and home responsibilities we are dealing.
Eight on the question of the burden of housework may be sought
through logical analysis. Unfortunately, many who have attempted
it have not seen the whole picture and have reached faulty conclusions.
TV hat they have seen is the decline in home manufacturing and process
ing and in the number of children, the increase in labor- and time-sav
ing devices. What they have not seen are the new duties added by the
very conditions they emphasize, the change in standards, the increased
time as wTell as money cost of newT modes of living, the decrease in the
number to do the work, and the fact that the presence of one child even
tor part of the day or for unforeseeable and occasional days may tie
(lie mother almost as completely as if there vTere 10 there all the time.
What has been happening in the home is in part the counterpart of
what has been happening in the economy as a whole, the decline in the
proportion of time given to agriculture and manufacturing and the in
crease in that given to distribution and service; less to producing the
fundamental necessaries and more to producing amenities and com
forts.
We have no accurate measure of the change in the length of the work
ing day and week of homekeeping women in the last two or three gen
erations. Tf their working hours have not declined 30 to 40 percent,
they have not fared as well as others. The few attempts to gather
factual data gave rather suprising results. Even in city homes of
the business and professional class an average workweek of 46 hours
tvas recorded, not over-all time but the sum of periods of 15 minutes
64

or longer. If the hours spent by other family members and paid
workers are added, the figure rises to the extraordinary total of 80
hours per week. It may be argued that these figures reflect the inef
ficiency and dawdling of these women, the amount of time spent in
useless ways. A famous economist has said that 2 hours’ labor in the
home should suffice for all rational daily needs. By the same ciiteria
the hours of all workers could be reduced far below the present number.
Needless to say, the length of the workweek of women with young
children decidedly exceeded that of those without by almost 50 percent.
It is this latter fact upon which we can profitably concentrate. To
speak of the average length of the working week of all homemakers is
to obscure the facts. The major fact, and the one that sets the problem,
is the variation among them at any one time and the variation for each
one at different periods of her life. Ignoring differences in standards
and efficiency which alter the length of the working week of these
workers as they do not that of wage earners, there are differences due
to the place of residence with its concomitant smoke, soot, accessibility
to markets, commercial and community services, and, of greater im
portance, differences in size of the house and its time- and labor-saving
arrangements and equipment. In addition, there are those differences
due to the number and age of the family members. It is this last
variable, inherent in the nature of the family itself, which poses the
central problem with respect to the effective utilization of the energies
and skills of women.
Paul C. Glick of the Bureau of the Census has traced the cycle
through which typical American families go according to data avail
able from the 1940 census. If history should exactly repeat itself, the
median age of women at the date of their first marriage would be 21.6
years, with the husband slightly less than 3 years older. About one
couple out of five would live with relatives or as lodgers for a while
after marriage. About 15 percent would have no children, lhe first
child of the 85 percent who have children would be born about a year
after marriage and in the next 4y2 years, two others. Thus the typical
mother would have borne her final child at the age of 27.2 years. She
would have then three children. For about 11 years she would have
at least one under 6. For 13 years, if all survive, she would have three
under 18, and for about 23 years one or more under 18. When the
last is 18, the mother will be 45. If the children do not leave home
until they marry and marry at the same age as their parents, she will
be 50 or 53 when the family has declined to its original size of two
members. On the basis of present life expectations, it will continue at
this size for 11 more years, and the wife will probably survive the hus
band. This mother from the time she is about 40 will have a declining
burden of child care and for several years before she is 65 a relatively
light burden of housework. Half of the mothers will marry a year or

so earlier than the one whose history has been depicted, and half will
marry later; half will have fewer than 3 children, and half will have
more, and the children will be dilferently spaced. Some women will
be widowed or divorced; if the former, it is usually late in the family
cycle after one or all the children are gone; if the latter, while they
are young.
It is in terms of this background that we come back to our two prob
lems. which married women who are not earning could do so without
undue sacrifice of health or leisure and without lowering standards
lor child care and family living? Which of the married women cur
rently with jobs are imperiling their health, sacrificing their leisure,
or lowering their family’s well-being ? The social interest is to decrease
both of these groups.
There is clearly a period, increasing in length, in the lives of more
and more married women when there is no responsibility for children
and when the burden of housework is light. There are also those who
marry and have no children. Why are so many of these women
absent from the labor force? We need not consider the gross fallacy,
that, we are better off if we do not utilize fully our potential labor
supply. It is equal fallacy to say, “It makes no difference how much
leisure women have, providing they use it well.” Our social aim is the
elimination of a leisure class, and the attainment instead of an equal
distribution of leisure that we hope all will use well.
I he married women with limited family responsibilities who are
not earning probably fall into three classes, or the decisions of all in
varying degrees are affected by three considerations. One is their
own, their husband’s, their associates’ unfavorable attitude toward
gainful employment of married women. More potent a reason for
not earning is that they do not want to. They prefer their leisure
to what their earnings would buy for themselves and their families.
Here are the lazy whose claims upon the income of others enable them
to be lazy. Here also are those who find their level of living satis
factory, and judge, perhaps rightly, that more things and less leisure
would not add to the sum total of family happiness. A third con
sideration is closely related, the kind of a job they could get and how
much they could earn. This last question is especially pertinent for
the woman of 45 or 50 who is contemplating a return to the labor
market after 20 to 25 years away from it. We are assuming that she
looks for a job in the community where her husband is worldng, that
is, in a geographically limited market. It is not surprising that many
conclude that what they would gain by earning would not be worth
what it costs.
Who then are the married women with jobs? Not those living on
faims, only 3.5 percent of the wives in farm families had paid jobs in
1940. Not in the main women 45 to 65. They were earning only
66

about half as frequently as wives under 45, even in urban communities
in 1940. Not in the main married women with children. In urban
communities earning was twice as frequent among those with no
children under 18 as among those with one or more. Only about
a tenth of those with children under 18 were in the labor force. Not
in the main the wives of men at the higher income levels. Taking
wives of the age 25 to 29 in those communities—metropolitan districts
of 100,000 or more—where earning is at the maximum, half of those
with no children under 10 whose husbands were earning under $1,500
had jobs in 1940, and only a fifth of those whose husbands were
earning $3,000 or more. A tenth of those with children under 10
in the lower income group were earning and only 2.5 percent of such
mothers at the higher income level.
My interpretation of these facts is that married women are pulled
or pushed into the labor market. The “pull" is the opportunity for
employment at attractive wages under good working conditions.
Such opportunities are at a maximum in boom periods, in metro
politan districts, and for1 the younger women with greater versatility
and skills. They are at a minimum in depressed periods, in rural
communities, and for the older women who have been long absent
from the labor market. The “push” is economic necessity, earnings
from other sources insufficient to meet the family’s needs. The “pull”
need not be so great if there are no children, the housework burden
is light, and the husband’s earnings moderate. The “push” must be
great if there are young children or other heavy family responsi
bilities. Even great need for money does not bring rural women into
paid work since there are no jobs to be had, and a need that will bring
the younger women in, or keep them there, will not draw the older
back.
We must then come to the conclusion that there are married women
without jobs whose earning would yield a net profit to themselves, their
families, and the community. Some will not take good jobs that are
available and others can find none that are suitable by any reasonable
standard. There are also married women with jobs whose situation
is not one with which we can he satisfied. They are the ones who in
spite of family responsibilities are forced by economic necessity to
take any job they can get. Over a fifth of the earning wives had chil
dren under 10 in 1940 and almost twp-fifths, children under 18. Their
families may be better off by virtue of their earning but we could draw
up an indictment of the state of affairs on many counts: The disad
vantaged position of the woman herself in the labor market, the loss
to the family of needed services, the efforts that most must put forth
to carry the job and their family responsibilities as well. The most
telling figures I know with respect to the load that these women must
carry come from a Kussian study made available by Kingsbury and

Fairchild. It. is a study of the time budget of employed men and
women. Both the men and women were family heads and on the job
for the same period of time. On the average the women spent almost
4 more hours per day in what was called “indispensable labor” than
did the men, 26 more hours per week. It may be different here and
now. Perhaps the Women's Bureau will let us know.
r find no easy answers to the problems I have suggested. Most diffi
cult are those posed by the married women who are underemployed.
Equally difficult is it to see how it will be made possible for married
women, especially those whose employment has not been continuous,
to enter the labor market with skills and opportunities for employ
ment equal to those of the single women and of men of the same age.
Legal limitations we can remove; adverse social attitudes can be
altered. But disabilities due to the discontinuity of their employment
and the responsibilities they assumed along with their marital and
parental status are a different matter.
Genuine economic necessity that forces mothers into the labor
market to take whatever they can get is in a sense our least difficult
problem. The assumption of greater social responsibility for chil
dren, a willingness to invest in human resources that is somewhere
near commensurate -with our investment in other types of resources,
would greatly reduce the proportions of this problem. When we de
cide that an undesired situation is remediable, debate on the best ways
and means is next order of the day.

SOCIAL PATTERNS FOR WOMEN
The Present and the Prospects
Ordway Tead, Chairman, Board of Higher Education, New York City; Editor,
Social and Economic Books, Harper and Brothers

My approach to the subject of the effective patterns of women’s life
is well suggested by two sentences from Mary Beard’s stimulating
volume, “America Through Women’s Eyes,” in which he says:
What woman conceives her role to be, if any at all, and how she regards
civilization become as important to the continuance and quality of civilization
as are her activities in every department of society and economy. Here as
everywhere a divorce of thought from action leads to a decline in creative
intelligence.1

It is to assure a better wedding of thought and action with regard
to the social patterns of modern women’s life and to help an upsurge
of creative intelligence by men and women as applied to this problem,
that I should like to address my remarks. We are at bottom concerned,
as Mrs. Beard soundly remarks, with women’s conception of their role
in a civilization which shall be of a certain quality. And since an
economy of material abundance is conceivable as a reality in the fore
seeable future, it is clearly the qualitative or value aspects of what
our civilization should cherish that needs to preoccupy us most
centrally.
There is not time to enumerate the gains of a hundred years in pat
terns of women’s relation to society. Let us agree that they have been
appreciable and most gratifying. Rather on an anniversary occasion
I conceive our obligation to be to project the trends of fact and of
improvement into another century.
If we are to center attention on the working woman, we have to
recognize that basically we are talking about most women in our
society. For whether they work from necessity or from desire, for
salary or for homemaking, the great majority are not idle.
In purely quantitative terms, the figures released by the Women’s
Bureau of the Department of Labor are instructive and impressive.
Over 16,000,000 women were working for wages or salaries in 1946.
Of a total of nearly 38,000,000 families, just under 29,000,000 were
normal families with both parents functioning. In a little less than
one-fifth of these normal families (about 5,000,000) both husband
and wife went out to work. And this represented an increase of
1 Published by Macmillan & Co., 3 939, p. 7.
785372°—48-

2,000,000 such families since 1940. Yet in families with children
under 6 years of age only 9 percent of the wives worked. Whereas
m the 6,600,000 families where a widowed mother was the breadwin
ner (or the family was otherwise headed by women) more than onethird of the women with children under 6 were at work, and 50 percent
of those with children above 6 but under 18 were working.
The patent fact is that the number of women working awav from
home is constantly increasing, although women with young children
tend to go out to work only under urgent money pressures.
A realistic grasp of the complexity of the total pattern requires,
however, a recognition of the variety of groupings into which women
fall in terms of work status.
There is the unmarried younger woman—usually under 25 years of
aSe who is working in the expectation of marriage which will allow
her withdrawal from the labor market.
There is the self-elected career woman, sometimes married, some
times not, sometimes combining her work with motherhood and some
times not.
there is the single woman over 25 who continues to work throuah
life, usually from necessity, because marriage has not come her way.
There is the childless married woman who works for various reasons.
There is the married woman with young children up to 15 or 16 who
usually avoids leaving home to work if income can be otherwise
supplied.
There is the married mother with grown children who in our society
is often in the anomalous position of wanting to be busy but is be
wildered by lack of opportunity, lack of strong incentive, or lack of
trained competence, or by all three together. In passing, her plight
may be characterized as among the most tragic of the groups in our
national community.
And finally, there is the widowed or divorced mother who, whatever
the age of her children, is forced by economic necessity to continue
indefinitely in the labor market.
To generalize safely about women in such varied relationships to
society is surely not an easy task. And thus to talk oversimply about
“working women” can readily lead to false conclusions.
# Nevertheless, a few broad characterizations seem worth while as
further defining the elements of the problem. These have to do with
what I shall call the personal, the domestic, and the economic in
fluences upon women’s social patterns of living.
As to the personal factors, it has to be recognized, with education
now extended through high school for an increasing majority of both
boys and girls, that women, like men, are approaching life with a
fuller anticipation of rich, rewarding, and variegated living than was
formerly true. People ask more of life today, materially and spiritu70

ally. The expectation of maximizing one’s selfhood, of realizing one’s
varied potentials of capacity and interest, of demonstrating one’s
functional usefulness to society—all this is a strong, even if often
inarticulate, demand being made upon life by women equally with
men. It has not been without fruitful results that in the last 25 years
the whole concept of “the development of personality” has come
prominently to the fore both in the teachings of psychology and in the
influential objectives of education at all levels. When Professor
William E. Hocking said that “the principle of the future state must
be that every man shall be a whole man,” he perhaps did not realize
the extent to which, at least in aspiration, that principle is already
influencing the minds and moods of more and more men and women.
To attain a sense of personal fulfillment with which is coupled a
satisfying sense of making a real social contribution has, in short, be
come a driving motive throughout our society to a truly astonishing
degree. Wherein that personal fulfillment comes is no doubt still
somewhat obscure to many. And it may well be true that for reasons
to be considered, women find it harder today to define that fulfillment
for themselves than do men. But the disturbing and provocative in
fluence of this motive is one of the strongest dynamics of our society.
And the very variety of the social patterns of woman's relation to
society only confuses her situation the more.
Indeed, the existence of something like another “irrepressible con
flict” needs, I believe, to be considered. The basic personal demands
made upon life are identical for men and women even if in some re
spects the channels of expression and the functional responsibilities
may on occasion differ. We all want security of material status and
the inner security of being loved, appreciated, and respected. We all
want to express “that one talent it is death to hide,” as Milton put it.
In other words, we each want some satisfaction of distinctive creativ
ity. We all want a recognition among those with whom we associate
that we count for and amount to something. We all want to be assured
that for us individually, it can be seen that, as the philosopher has
said, “Life means intensely and it means good.” We all want to feel
that our emotional demands for beauty, for peace of mind, for ability
to cope with life’s suffering, guilt, sin, and tragedy, can be measurably
satisfied.
And for women distinctively there is the reality that the urge to
creativity normally includes the desire to bear children and, under
certain conditions, not to bear children. A whole train of consequences
can follow from this desire with results not only felicitous on the one
hand but yielding insecurities, fears, anxieties, guilt feelings, and
frustrations on the other.
Such a total body of demands upon life as dictated by our innate
desires is by common admission not easy for any individual to attain

in our kind of society with its confused standards, hectic compulsions,
and uncertain economic underpinnings. The fact that we have not yet
translated our amazing potential material productivity into a reason
ably secure, adequate standard of physical well-being for all our
families is, I am sure, a pervading disruptive influence in our body
politic. Adverse or uncertain provisions for livelihood still hang over
our society—in terms of threats of inflation, depression, unemployment
and other social hazards—to a degree that has neurotic consequences
for many. And all this is an influence in the direction of insecurity
which probably falls with heavier emotional force on women than on
men, for the simple reason that women’s relation to economic activity
tends still to be indirect and secondary.
Our ends of security, status, creativity, personal integrity, and per
sonal relation to the spiritual forces at work in and through us, thus
comprise a total demand upon life which it is hard to satisfy at best.
And when, as with women, the problem of achieving these ends pre
sents the choice of widely different modes of expression which have to
be reconciled, the situation can readily give rise to profound inner
conflict, and often does.
It is, of course, trite and oversimplified to state her conflict as that
between motherhood and career. The dilemma is rather to be stated
more profoundly as centering in decisions as to where, when, and how
the drive to creativity, love, and self-growth is to express itself. In
each individual case how are creative urges—physiological, intellec
tual, moral, and spiritual—dll to get reasonably balanced and adequate
expression ? For many women in today’s United States, I venture that
this dilemma is harder to resolve than for many men. One is prompted
to say on their behalf as Antonio said of himself in The Merchant of
V enice:
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me
That I have much ado to know myself.

I hasten to agree that the dileimna of this irrepressible conflict about,
the focus and flowering of creativity is not helped but hindered by
the typical marital situation, if one can identify any one situation as
typical. I refer to the fact that men, broadly speaking, immersed in
their own aggressive drives for creativity and for ego-maximizing
in a competitive society, do not yet seem ready on as wide a scale as
necessary to realize the deep roots of the woman’s dilemma. Hence,
they do not do what they might as husbands and as citizens to help
alleviate the contributing causes. There are still vast accumulations
of male pride, possessiveness, false social standards, self-centeredness,
and fearfulness of job competition, which aggravate the over-all so
cial picture that women confront. These are a part of the social pat
tern tli,ey encounter. There is ho solution, as affecting these negative
masculine forces, which can come about without frank collaboration
72

and a truer equal fellowship between the sexes both in the home and
in the marketplace.
Yet I think in all honesty that another deterrent influence from the
woman’s side has also to be reckoned with, before we try to look
for remedies. I refer to the ever-present danger that too many women
may be willing to settle their accounts with life too cheaply or too
easily. A too ready willingness to adjust to the strong forces opposed
to her attaining a rounded creativity can be for women a resolution
which is no solution. Wherever there is the attitude that to marry,
settle down, and have a family is to solve the individual woman’s prob
lem, there is a too simple capitulation to conventional influences of the
male and society generally. “Settling down” is a withdrawal from the
creative arena, which is, of course, not confined to women.
But the male in the necessary process of earning a livelihood can,
on the whole, through his work, become creative to some degree if
he be so minded. Admittedly the same is true of a career within the
home for a woman. It can he of enormous creative satisfaction on
all the sides of her personality. But surrender to a less than rounded
vision and employment of one’s creative powers in the home is often
the easier wav. For it mollifies the husband, pleases the children,
and takes less energy and initiative merely to keep the home fires
burning. Always to take from life less than it can offer of richness
and personal unfolding is to deny one’s very selfhood, or at least to
hold it too cheaply.
I need mention but briefly the second kind of influence conditioning
women’s social pattern. I here have reference to the familiar fact
of the changed character of the home as a place to function in. The
urban woman and suburban woman working in the home with or
without children face an operating problem different in important
respects from that of the farm wife, and from every wife of 50 years
ago. I do not say the task is necessarily easier, but it is different
because of domestic gadgets of all kinds, because of smaller families,
and because of the variety of services that are now carried forward
outside the home. The tie that binds the woman to the home as a
creative moral force over and above its living accommodations is thus,
unfortunately, not as strong and as challenging in a sustained way as
it was for our forebears. Whether or not this is unfortunate would
seem to me to depend basically upon how women in the home deal
with these changed conditions. And it may well be that a strengthen
ing of the home as a social institution is one of the major corrective
efforts to be faced by men and women alike.
My third set of influences are the economic, as relating to women at
work outside the home. And I shall maintain that almost all women
who go to work, even those few who can afford adequate paid assist
ance in their homes, find that they experience at least some tensions

and strains in the effort to do for each claimant upon their time all
that they would like to do. There is a running apprehension that if
the job is being well served, there may be a slighting of husband, or
children, or parents, or home management, or of social relations, or
even of one’s own limited health and strength. A majority of working
women recognize two major obligations while men tend to recognize—
for better or worse—only one.
A full-time job of from 36 to 40 hours a week is a demanding ex
perience. If a woman in some sense is also competing with a man at
her job, that becomes even more demanding. In all honesty, the
posts for women in many organizations are mostly confined to the
lower echelons. The limits upon creativity here may thus become
formidable. Or where women occupy supervisory positions, the
anxiety to deliver satisfactorily can too easily lead to a compensatory
display of rather austere authority by them, which is basically at odds
with the kind of friendly human relations they would naturally mani
fest in less strenuous and demanding associations.
Nor is the situation as to the use by women of their bargaining power
over terms of employment on some collective basis as advantageous
as it should be. In a total labor union enrollment of a little under
15,000,000 out of a wage and salaried group of close to 60,000,000, the
number of women workers in unions—namely, around 3,000,000—is
not impressive. And since the majority of women workers are in
clerical or domestic categories, they fall into occupations as yet rela
tively little organized by the unions.
I stress this need for greater collective action also for important
subjective reasons. Training in the assumption of that individual
responsibility essential in a democracy is only obtainable by people
being explicitly thrust into posts of responsibility. Many more such
posts in the unions no less than directly in work relations can greatly
multiply the chances for women to learn that the price of personal
growth is responsible effort. The more women who can he induced to
take some kind of office fitted to their talents, the more women will be
matured for responsible leadership.
In short, I am prepared to admit that, except in quite subordinate
and relatively uncreative posts, our economic order does not yet recog
nize women as fully enfranchised participants. Progress has of course
been made, but business and industry are in all the crucially deter
mining factors still a man’s world. And as long as this remains true
in spirit even if not in every detail, women at many kinds of work
find themselves in subtle conflict with the economic environment and
with its animating aims and drives. I hasten to add that this is not
women s fault. But that they are psychically the sufferers because
of prevailing working patterns, I firmly believe.
74

Whether we look at women as developing personalities in their own
right and with valid democratic claims to autonomy and individual
integrity, or look-at them in their role as homemakers, or look at them
in their capacity as wage and salary earners—it is not a pretty picture.
And we do well on the centenary of the start of the woman’s suffrage
movement to appraise searchingly where we should go from here.
What, in the light of this analysis, can he done about the obstructing
influences in women’s social pattern ?
I should like to propose a variety of measures touching on various
aspects of contemporary life—measures which, could they be simul
taneously pressed, would, I believe, help us into another century where
in addition to calling the vote her own, the woman of tomorrow could
more completely call her soul her own. And this she would do because
in a vital sense she would be able to discover her soul more fully and
more truly.
1. On the economic side the importance to working women of active
participation in some labor organization for collective bargaining
provisions is crucial. All labor unions should allow women equal
rights of membership and should encourage women members into the
councils of union management. Only so will her special problems
of security and sufficiency of income, of leaves for maternity, and of
provisions for special care for young children, be given more con
structive attention.
Unions are needed also in many now unorganized callings where
women are numerous.
The present union movement has sufficiently concerned itself with
the broad sense of women’s stronger status in society. Once union
leaders can come to think not alone in terms of rewards for work but
also in terms of total personality unfolding as an objective, a rich new
area of significant advance will have been charted.
A further effort which the unions should support aggressively, if not
t ake the direct lead in, is the equalizing throughout the States of legis
latively enforced protective labor standards with special emphasis on
laws requiring equal pay for equal work.
2. One particular provision which collective bargaining might well
help to press upon the attention of managements is the granting to
women workers as an accepted practice of the right to part-time work.
If it were planned that two women should each work on half time to
supply a full week’s work, that would enable many women better to
reconcile the claims of home and of job, of personal health and family
duties.
The social benefits of half-time work seem to me so considerable that
the adjustments required at the job wTould in the vast majority of posi
tions be worth whatever bother they might entail. Perhaps the ac-

ceptance of no other single practice would be so helpful to so many
women.
3. As a public policy over and beyond possible provisions in union
contracts, there should be immediate consideration of a social program
of maternity subventions under proper safeguards. We have already
accepted the principle involved here so far as widows are concerned;
and the possible benefits of an extension of the idea need fresh
evaluation.
4. The approach of planned parenthood to child bearing and rearing
should be encouraged so that more women might be enabled to relate
the rearing of adequate families to their resources as creators and
builders of happy and successful homes.
5. More can surely be done than has yet been undertaken to make
provision on a dignified and well-paid basis for trained women who
on either a whole- or part-time basis can qualify as family workers and
domestic assistants.
6. The public educational responsibilities still to be assumed in relation to this problem are tremendous.
Of top priority here is the effort to teach boys and young men about
the nature and responsibilities of marriage, of family life, of father
hood, of women’s right to self-fulfillment as that is self-determined.
We still have far to go in a realization by men that the family is the
primary institution in which democratic principles have to be acknowl
edged and practiced; and the implications of that practice need care
ful spelling out to both sexes.
It is next important that women’s education as it extends more gen
erally on into the thirteenth and fourteenth year of schooling in
community colleges, stress personal and vocational guidance, and
help women students to some elementary vocational competence as
part of their general education. In the next 10 to 20 years we shall
be offering to nearly a half of our men and women 2 more years of
free public education. And this should supply a great chance to fit
both sexes for personal, vocational, and civic capabilities in ways as
yet unattempted.
Women’s education, like men’s, should help to clarify the areas of
citizen obligation for the conduct locally of public housekeeping, edu
cation, health, housing, recreation, and worship. The development
of civic interest can give scope to many women for invaluable part
time or volunteer community service. We have as a Nation hardly
begun to tap the resources of women’s rightful contribution to the
conduct and oversight of the many public services that contribute to
domestic and social well-being.2
2 Excellent suggestions for giving effect to such programs are to be found in Reorgani
zation of Community Services, issued by the Woman’s Foundation, 110 East 40th Street
New York, N. Y.

There should be a great extension of public, all-day nursery schools
for children as young as 2% to 3 years of age.
Women teachers should not be required to resign from their teach
ing when they marry. Indeed, every encouragement should be offered
to married teachers to continue professionally whenever that is practi
cal.
7. My final proposal is admittedly in terms of generalities but from
my point of view is perhaps the most important of all. I quoted
Professor Hocking as saying that the principle of the future state
must be that every man and every woman shall be a whole person.
No less for modern woman than for modern man we have the obli
gation to be more searching within ourselves as to what constitutes
wholeness in personality. And we have as men and women to find
out in what organized social setting rounded personality can flower
to better advantage than here and now.
Many men are narrowed by work and business. Many women are
narrowed by home and children—or by jobs and domestic duties. As
long as there is fragmented living, there will be frustrated lives.
Abundance of life on the material plane will of itself bring no as
surance to either men or women that they possess the secret of inner
security, of courage, and of strong ties of creative affection.
The social patterns which now exercise a frustrating influence have
multiple causes, as we have seen. But we should not deny that in
some measure we can possess within ourselves—both men and women—
the resources and the powers which understand wherein true fullness
of life inheres.
To work creatively, to love family and friends, to find beauty, to
share community obligation, to play productively, to worship rever
ently—a person, man or woman, is whole only as all of these deep
desires of life can be realized. ,
To expect less from living, as shown by the narrowness and confusion
of one’s inner life, is a kind of surrender—and we see this all about
us taking different forms in men’s and women’s patterns of behavior.
Not to surrender, but rather boldly to affirm the ways wherein
abundance of the inner life is fed—this is every man’s and every
woman’s summons. This is the basic proposal for spiritual health
in our time. We home to find the fullnms of ourselves.
And as this summons is wisely heeded, the prospect is that each
person’s response to life can attain an ardor, a glow, and a warmth of
compelling grace and power. This grasp of the nature of a larger
selfhood can be for women, as well as for men, a new light upon the
path of life and a new way to creative social patterns for every person.

February 19 Morning Session
WORKING WOMEN, THEIR CITIZENSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES

Shifting Status of Women: Panel Discussion:
Harrison Smith, Moderator
Mrs. Harold Stone
Maida Springer
Elisabeth Christman

Minerva Bernardino
Mildred Fairchild
Dorothy Kenyon
Harrison Smith

SHIFTING STATUS OF WOMEN
Moderator, Harrison Smith
Associate Editor, Saturday Review of Literature:
T may not be a fair statement to say that I first became interested
in women a year ago. Actually, I have been interested in them
for a long time. I happen to have been one of those young and ardent
men who walked up Fifth Avenue, in the suffrage parade in 1920,
carrying one-half a banner in a high wind.
I became involved in what is now known as the “woman problem,” in
an odd way. A year ago I lost my temper. It happened that I had an
editorial to write and went over to the Yale Club to dig up some ma
terial the night before. I began to read current magazines, and I dis
covered, to my consternation, that all the major periodicals of the
country were violently attacking the American woman, on all phases
of the American woman’s life, I said to myself, “How does this hap
pen ? As an editor I know enough to realize that they could not have
appeared 3 years ago when we were at war.”
I decided that during the war women had been, as they always were
in wartime, kicked upstairs. They maintained positions, found jobs,
discovered new talents for themselves, and earned salaries which they
had not dreamed of earning before. When the war was over, there was
a united effort to put them back where they came from. Only this
time the effort to send them back seemed to me, while not a conspiracy,
to be directed in a clever way. The attack was expressed, as you know,
through books as well as magazine articles.
Now those attacks on women were serious because they were directed,
not only against women who worked for wages, but against the young

married woman, the housewife, and finally that large group of women
over 40 years old who number about 25 million today.
I didn’t know which end of this problem to tackle. So I wrote a
general editorial in a hurry the next morning. It had the most
prodigious success, at least for a weekly which has a circulation of
only 90,000. Several hundred enthusiastic letters came in. After
that, I was asked to speak on the question, before groups and on the
radio, and I have been getting deeper*and deeper into the woman
question every day.
I was like a man who started sinking in a morass and finds that
the bog has become quicksand. I have so far, however, halted my
progress at the threshold of matrimony. I felt it was extremely
dangerous to go behind that door.
While I have jumped the gap of young marriage and the years when
a woman is producing her children, I have come face to face with
that startling and enormous group of women who are between the
age of 42 and that age, 69, at which it is now determined that the
average woman should die. There is a most interesting point there.
It is incredible and startling to see these life insurance figures rise,
especially in regard to women. As you know, women’s life expectancy
is now stated to be 69, and men’s 63. I ask you, will women finally
win their battle?
If we don’t look out, this group of women will clutter the earth.
You see them everywhere. Most of them don’t know what to do
with themselves. It has been one of my efforts to see if it wouldn’t
be possible to direct the energies of these women, many of whom
have executive capacities. I don’t mean those who work or are en
gaged in such activities as you here are, but the idle women who
might give their woman-power to their country in a thousand different
ways. Just how we can manage that, I don’t know. I don’t think
they will interfere in the labor market. I don’t think they are going
to worry anybody, but it will certainly be a spectacle to see these
millions of able ladies get started on something, to see their energies
engaged in activities that are important to us and to the world.
A man in politics with whom I was discussing the problem said,
“Don’t talk about that! Can you conceive of what would happen if
all the women’s clubs ever got together on one thing ? There wouldn’t
be a politician in Washington whose hat wouldn’t be blown off.” And
1 think he is right about it, too.
It is true that I have not investigated any of these problems thor
oughly. It seemed to me that if, like a traveler in a strange country,
I used my first impressions and emotions as best I could and slowly
penetrated deeper into the subject, I could perform a service of some
value.
80

What 1 am actually calling for is a kind of modern crusade, not
the old crusade for women’s rights which we assumed women had
won 28 years ago. We assumed, because women had the vote, that
the battle was over. The battle is by no means over. In fact, women
are losing it in some ways and in many places day by day. Some
thing must be done about it, and it can only be done by an inspired
and intelligent movement for the partnership of women with men in
all the fields of activity in America.
There is something to be said for that partnership. In the first
place, women own two-thirds of the wealth of the United States. If
they were men, that would not only make them partners, but presi
dents and vice presidents in the firm. Of course, they don’t get the
power that goes with that wealth. The power goes to the bankers,
directors, brothers-in-law, and all the others who become executors
of the widow. While the returns from this enormous wealth flow
into women’s pockets or trickle into them through dividends, the real
power of wealth is directed, of course, by men. There would be an
economic revolution if something could be done about that. Perhaps
the less said about it the better, but' it is a power that women could
use, if they chose to, in a beneficent way.
Then, of course, the larger undertaking for women is to make up
their minds that there shall he no more war. How is that going to
be done? I confess I don’t know, but I do know that if women could
decide who were the right men to vote for, determine somehow who
were the men who would lead us most definitely toward peace, then,
providing those women would join together, a mighty purpose would
be achieved. And I’m not referring to Mr. Wallace, incidentally. It is
not enough to say, “I will give you peace. Vote for me.” I think there
is a choice somewhere, and I think it ought to be, the women’s job to
ferret out those men and discover the right ones in the community
that will somehow lead us toward lasting peace.
I think also, that in order to achieve this gigantic purpose, more
women should get into the legislatures. I certainly think that our
Congress here on the Hill furnishes quite a sight: Seven women, after
28 years of women’s vote! And a few of those women are, I gather,
the widows of what are cheerfully known as “former incumbents.”
There is an enormous campaign for women in all of these problems
and in others which you are going to talk about today, of which I
know very little. So I say, “Let’s have a new crusade, not to knock
men off their perch but to get a seat beside them.”
Mrs. Harold Stone
League of Women Voters:

Of course, I don’t hold quite the same view that Mr. Smith does.
I am afraid he has been too much in New York. I have been out over

the country. I was born in “Ioway.” I taught school in Iowa, Michi
gan, and Louisiana. I spent some time in California. I have lived in
the East for nearly 10 years. But I have been traveling out over the
country as part of my responsibilities as a member of the National
Board of the League of Women Voters.
I see this American woman a little bit differently. Now, perhaps
1 am going to paint a somewhat idealized picture, but it will be for
the other members of the panel to snipe at her. They can bring her
down to earth. But this is the way I see her, and I have met not
hundreds, but thousands, of her. Of course, I know that in our or
ganization, at least, our membership has increased 42 percent in the last
3 years. I also know that, at least in our organization, we do speak
with one voice. We have representative democratic procedures for
finding that voice, and I believe it is heard.
So, when I look at this American woman, I see a woman of heroic
proportions, clear of eye and trim of figure. On one arm she carries
the family market basket, on “t’other” shoulder swings a smartly
tailored bag. She worked 4 or 5 years after she graduated from high
school or perhaps college, and she says to herself some day she’ll work
for dollars again. But not right now. From her experience as a
working gal she learned to meet a daily schedule. She learned to or
ganize her work. She learned to work with a lot of different kinds of
people. Every weekday morning now she is up and at it for her family
and her community. No kimonos at breakfast! She does not meander
into her day.
As I said, her day is organized. Not down to the last quarter of an
hour, perhaps, not every day, but some days, and she loves it that way.
Her doctor tells her that the active life is the healthy life. She is
competent, I should like to repeat that: She is competent. She
drives a car as if she were born in it. She types, at least 70 words a
minute. Yes, and she can take shorthand, too. She knows that
Jimmie Byrnes and Anna Lord Strauss take shorthand because they
don’t want to miss anything. She can write minutes as interesting
as a novel. She can cut a stencil and run a mimeographing machine.
She uses the telephone for the purpose of conveying a single message
at a time. No meandering here, either. Not that she can’t tell a
funny story occasionally. The morning after the budget hearing she
can’t resist telling a joke on the stuffiest of the city fathers. That
market basket now. She sees it in relation to the entire world. She
reads in the paper, “Price Adjustments in the Commodity Market
Have Been Greatly Influenced by More Optimistic Forecasts of Total
World Food Supply.” She reflects on that. It makes sense to her,
and she ties it into some other things she knows about, FAO and ERP,
and domestic supply and demand. She knows that Americans are
better nourished than any other nation in the world has ever been, and
82

she feels that she plays a part in keeping things that way. So right
now she is buying tongue and oleomargarine and skipping the bacon
and beefsteak except on special occasions.
She just mailed a letter to a Congressman, telling him exactly what
she thinks about the Federal tax on oleomargarine, which isn’t much,
but she remembered to be polite.
She talks these things over with her neighbors and friends and at
regular meetings — small meetings — where she can say what she
thinks—brisk and purposeful meetings. They are regular because
she knows mighty well that her family’s welfare depends on the
happy or unhappy trends of world events. She reflects quite a bit
on that fact. “Optimistic Forecasts of World Food Supply Next
Year” can bring the price of butter down in a big hurry.
Time was when she skimmed the headlines and the meaning of these
things went right over her head. But those regular discussions have
sharpened her eyes and made her pause at different words coming in
on the radio. Recently she was on a committee to compare the news
coverage of her home-town paper on UN with that of the New York
Times for a 6-7 weeks’ period. She did a lot of clipping and pasting,
and when the committee work was done she went along to see the
editor and asked: “Why not more UN news for the people of Middle
town?” Now they’re getting it.
She was on a radio program the other day, a regular feature pro
duced weekly by the League of Women Voters. There was a part for
a little boy, and her son went along and filled in. Two sentences in
all, but this is what he told his friends the next day: “Gosh, I went
along with my mother to the radio station yesterday and I talked over
the telescope. And—and my mother talked and I got to say a few
words, too, and they were League of Women Voters words. And gosh,
it was hard work. We had to go down afterward and buy me an ice
cream strawberry soda.” As the twig is bent—
She has found recently that radio producers and theater managers
are responsive—indeed very responsive—to her desires.
These heroic proportions I was talking of, well—she came into my
office one day last summer, and this time she was from California and
she and her husband owned an almond grove. We fell to talking about
reciprocal trade and the coming ITO conference. We spoke in gener
alities for a while, until I asked her about the tariff on almonds. She
admitted it was high and that almond raising was very profitable,
especially during and since the war. Our talk passed on to other
things, and after a bit she got up and said “Good-bye.” She walked
to the door and then turned back. “I just want to say,” she said quietly,
“that my husband and I have talked about that high tariff on almonds,
and if it is for the good of all and if it is the road to world peace, we
would understand if the tariff on almonds was cut. And if almond

growing were no longer profitable, we would find some other way to
earn a living.”
Within that bag. Swinging casually on her shoulder, her various
artifacts are neatly and orderly arranged. She can find them without
fussing. And there are also a couple of little pamphlets there varying
with the season. “Are You Registered to Vote? Here’s How You
Do It,” says one of them. “Have You Written Your Congressman
about ERP ?” says another. In short, brightly, briefly written, attrac
tively written booklets. She loves them. They are such fun and so
much a habit now, that they are no extra trouble.
Are American women good citizens? They are not numerous in
public office. Are women irreligious because there aren’t more women
preachers? You don’t change a man-shaped culture overnight. It
might be better to work shoulder to shoulder with the men, with an atti
tude of “I’d like to take my share of the responsibility for things now
for a while. Things are really pretty bad, and perhaps it is because
I haven’t been carrying my weight,” There will be more of her hold
ing more responsibilities in the near future, I am sure. But meanwhile,
she knows that everyone counts in a democracy. Yes, everyone counts
in a democracy.
Maida Springer
International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union:

Mrs. Stone, in her final remarks, talked about all women in a democ
racy ; all people must receive their fair share of its benefits and accept
their responsibilities. I would like to speak for a few moments on the
industrial women in a democracy as distinguished from the homemaker
and the professional women. Where the industrial woman is part of
an organized trade-union group, she is better able to assume the re
sponsibilities of citizenship and to contribute to her community because
of the social and economic benefits she receives through her union.
Because of her shorter workweek, higher wages, and sense of personal
worth and dignity, she is released to take her rightful place as a citizen.
We are here celebrating a centennial of the struggle of women for
equality and against discrimination in any form. You see, it would be
easy for me to tell you about equality in my union, the garment work
ers, where the women are in the majority. We do not discriminate
against the men in that union. We allow’ them to have the benefits
and the privileges of the 35-hour week, vacation with pay, job guar
antee, health benefits, and all of the other advantages, except of course,
maternity benefits. This we still reserve exclusively as a woman’s priv
ilege. We do intend, however, to teach the men that once they are
fathers, they too share in that responsibility and j oy.
Seriously, we are celebrating a great deal more than a centennial of
the struggle for exclusively women’s rights. As I read some of the
84

heroic efforts of the women who made for great trade unionism, not
only for women but for all workers, I am of the opinion that because
women fought so hard for better conditions—which led to health legis
lation, factory inspection, and other safety measures—the conditions of
men were also improved. My mind goes back to 1825, when that first
strike of tailoresses occurred—for healthier conditions, for shorter
hours, and for all of the other improvements which we today accept as
a matter of right and of course. We have lost many battles and won a
few. And today a trade unionist and a woman are accepted to a degree.
I say “accepted to a degree” because even in 1948 there are still
widespread fallacious attitudes about working women. One of these
is that women are an unstable labor supply, to be used only during
a national emergency and to be discarded "when the emergency is
over. Another is that most married women’s husbands provide them
with economic security and that they work merely for pin money.
This latter attitude completely overlooks the hard reality that women
work of absolute necessity because a great percentage of them are
heads of families, or must supplement the meager earnings of their
husbands. Furthermore, there is that other large group of women
who are single and are their own sole support.
A third fallacy is that women are unorganizable, or difficult to or
ganize, and therefore contribute little to economic advancement. The
truth is all people are difficult to organize. We have not yet reached
the stage where belonging to an organization to improve one’s eco
nomic status is as significant in a democracy as one’s religion or one’s
ultimate faith, political or otherwise.
Actually, where hours are reduced and wages increased, the working
woman has more time to devote to her own self-development and to
her family. Her wages contribute toward a better education for
her children. She has more time to learn of cultural things. She
has time to join in with the women who have had greater economic
and social advantages. This development of the whole person should
be the ultimate goal of a rounded democracy. However, we are in
our attitudes still a far cry from it. I have in mind a recent incident.
My son, who is a college student and who is studying economics, told
me that in a class discussion of labor which centered around John L.
Lewis and the miners, one of his classmates asked, “Why educate the
miners’ children, because miners’ children have mentalities so low they
can never rise above that anyway? And if they are educated, who
will dig the coal ? ” This from a member of the future generation upon
whose social consciousness much of the Nation’s economic welfare will
depend.
This morning my plea to those of you who may not have had much
contact with trade-union people, and who may feel that they are
people apart, is that you realize that we as a Nation are strengthened
785372“—48-

•7

or weakened in the measure that workers succeed. In trade-unionism
we stress the principle that a chain is no stronger than its weakest
link". If working women and men have no standards, the standards
of the whole country are pulled down. If workers cannot supply the
simple decencies of life to their families, the entire world suffers.
Today we in America are a bulwark of hope and freedom in the
world, and as trade-unionists and as women we have been in the
vanguard of enlightenment. We are demonstrating that democracy
as a way of life, imperfect though it may be, is the best medium
through which to achieve the fullest development of the individual.
In the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union we have
pioneered in the development of the individual. We have started
classes in public speaking to help our members become more articulate.
These classes are not just public speaking classes; they are discussions
in current events. They concern themselves with what is hap
pening on the European Recovery Program, with the effects of the
Taft-Hartley Law, with social insurance, housing, and health legis
lation. These discussions give an awareness to the workers in the
shop of the important issues of the day and what role they can play
in deciding these issues.
The trade-unionists today have done an amazing educational job
for the Nation, and those of us assembled here belonging to other or
ganizations can go back with the conviction that other public spirited
groups must join with the trade-unions and carry on greater intensive
efforts to keep this country healthy and vital through an informed
and articulate citizenry.
The Women’s Bureau, in the evaluation of standards it has been
making around the country, has broadened the base of the Nation’s
understanding of women’s role in a democracy. It has given in
valuable assistance and provided incentive for us to translate these
standards into realities. Congratulations to them for their work,
more power to them, and let us go forward !
Elisabeth Christman 1
National Womens Trade Union League:

A few decades ago women in industry were bypassed as an unknown
quantity and scarcely recognized as wage earners. Trade unions too
often were not concerned about the wages a woman was paid or the
number of hours she worked. In fact, little attention was given to
the hazards surrounding her employment. The industrial woman had,
as we now say, no status.
Let us briefly review progress made. About 3 million women are now
members of trade unions, and a goodly number of them have re
1 In Elisabeth Christman’s enforced absence her paper was read by Pauline Newman,
National Women’s Trade Union League.

sponsibilities and contribute significantly to making collective bar
gaining work. It is true that not many women are in top places in the
unions. It is still to a high degree a man’s world at the top. But many
women without benefit of title or of official recognition are a power
behind the throne, and it is simply a matter of time in which to pile up
examples of proven capacities until women get the official recognition
they deserve.
Luckily, women traditionally have patience and persistence, two
qualities that stand them in good stead in their struggle for recogni
tion. Many of the tasks performed by women in industry in World
War II, wliich seemed to be new fields for them, had actually been
performed by women during World War I. In the intervening years
we forgot what women had done in the first war, so that in the recent
war the great discovery of women’s ability was made all over again.
The fact that large numbers of women are now in the labor force to
stay is recognized by provision for them in union contracts. For in
stance, the provisions respecting equal pay for comparable work are
written into union agreements, which is all leading to the recognition
of women as persons in the unions.
We are also participating actively in the strengthening of existing
labor laws and in the promotion of other social legislation on national
and local levels. Women’s auxiliaries of men’s unions have an in
creasing awareness of the importance of laws and of community proj
ects. Women in the labor movement did a more zealous job in con
nection with price control during the war. Trade-union women
served almost universally on price panels in their communities, and
auxiliaries and other groups got out thousands of effective releases
showing the value of price control to the consumer and the importance
of holding the line together. These women were a real factor in help
ing to make price control work, and they furnish an illustration of
what we can do if we organize our efforts.
The status women achieved during the last war was threatened with
another setback in the postwar period. But the union membership of
women had grown to such proportions that it was not so easy to bypass
them or to silence them. They were aware of the changing world and
the fact that they are a part of the permanent labor force, part of the
60 million who want, need, and must have jobs. They cannot be denied
the right to work, the right to equal pay, the right to job seniority, the
right to legal safeguards on the job. These are the basic rights of
women workers and a fundamental part of the American way of life.
The trade-union women’s program should be to make these princi
ples common everyday practice. There are a number of women on
national executive boards of unions, but not enough of them. Women
are on wage negotiating committees, but again not enough of them.
More and more women are holding local union offices, increasing num

bers of women are doing work for Federal legislation for national
unions and are taking the leadership on State legislation matters and
appearing before State legislatures. An increasing number of women
hold the position of shop steward, an important post in a union, but
considering the number of women organized, the proportion is still
far too small.
Women, are not assertive enough. They must learn by doing in the
union. The National Women’s Trade Union League recognized this
at its last convention and recommended increased activity in union
affairs and in community projects, both for the benefit of the union
and of the community.
We have a wealth of proven factual material at our disposal for
the asking from the Women’s Bureau, and we are increasingly aware
of the value of this material and of the importance of learning how
to use it effectively.
We are forging for ourselves an increasingly important place in the
trade-union movement, which in turn makes us more awyare of our
citizenship and community responsibilities. It is to the mutual benefit
of ourselves as individuals of the trade-union movement and of our
Nation that we are constantly striving to strengthen this relationship.
Minerva Bernardino
Inter-American Commission of Women:

Before I start my remarks I would like to express the thanks of the
Inter-American Commission of Women to Miss Miller and to the
Women’s Bureau of the United States for their invitation to be here
today. I think it will be a nice opportunity to remind this gathering
of outstanding women that a member of the staff of the Women’s
Bureau is also a delegate of the United States Government to our
Inter-American Commission of Women. Her good command of our
language, of our culture, her interest in the problems of women in
our countries have been a great help to our Inter-American Commis
sion of Women. I am referring to Miss Mary Cannon, for whom we
women of the Americas have a great admiration.
Problems of women in the economic, social, and legal fields are uni
versal. They knowT no national boundaries. Need, the lack of rights
and privileges, low standards of living and working—these conditions
affect the w7ell-being of women wherever they exist. This fact is evi
denced by the many different phases of economic problems discussed
in this conference—better working conditions, better rates of pay in
large, women-employing industries, proper training for women in in
dustry, and community services to help lighten the burden of women
who are both workers and homemakers.
These and other problems have been acute for women workers in
Latin America for a long time, and will continue to be serious as those
88

countries expand their industrialization, which is just beginning in
some of them. Women are working because as in this country their
earnings are needed for the livelihood of their families. But they are
working without adequate legislation or its proper enforcement, and
consequently without just and fair pay.
This situation of working women in Latin America has for a number
of years been a major consideration of the Inter-American Commission
of Women. In an effort to compile definite and authentic data on the
subject, the Commission last year asked the cooperation and assistance
of the Women’s Bureau. Sources of information were found to be
scant, and replies received from 6 of the 20 Latin American countries
were incomplete for our purpose. However, we were able to secure
basic data for a brief statement on the economic status of women in the
other Americas, which the Commission will include in its official
Report, to be submitted at the Ninth International Conference of
American States in Bogota next month. This Report will include also
complete data on the political and civil status of women of the Ameri
can Republics.
We will use the very lack of material on the economic status of
women to call attention to the sad plight and neglect of working
women in the Latin American countries. We will ask the American
governments to include in their legislative programs sufficient pro
vision for a complete study of the economic status of women in the
respective countries; and we will urge that trained specialists and
technicians be supplied to work on this important project. After the
Bogota Conference, the Commission hopes that it may, in cooperation
with the International Labor Office, make an exhaustive study on
working women in Latin America.
Chiefly through efforts of the Inter-American Commission of
Women since 1928, women in ten of the Latin American countries now
enjoy equal national suffrage. Municipal suffrage is established in
four other Republics. Woman must first be recognized as a deservingcitizen of her country, as an integral part of its government, before
she can successfully seek rights and concessions in other fields.
The Inter-American Commission of Women, at the coming Con
ference of the American States on Bogota, will therefore ask for the
adoption of a “Convention on Equal Civil and Political Rights”—an
agreement in treaty form, which, when ratified by the American
governments, would provide equal political as well as civil rights
for women in those Republics where it does not yet exist. I am happy
to tell you that the delegation of one of the most advanced Latin
American countries will sponsor this proposed Convention at the
Bogota Conference.
Its adoption would be a distinct step toward the economic better
ment of women in the American Republics. With full political

status—the enjoyment of civil equality and responsibility with men—
they will have greater right to ask for and expect similar provisions in
the economic world.
As you probably know, the Inter-American Commission of Women
also was responsible for the adoption of the equal nationality con
vention at the Montevideo Conference of American States in 1933.
This treaty which gives to women married to foreigners the right to
keep their nationality and transmit it to their children has been ratified
by the majority of the American Republics.
If the direct action of the Inter-American Commission of Women
is not needed for aid to women of the United States, I am sure they will
feel no less an obligation to help women in sister American Republics
to secure the same political freedom which they themselves enjoy.
And they will recall that the economic advancement of women in the
United States has been greatest since the gaining of their political
independence in 1920.
Therefore, the Commission hopes for the support of the United
States delegation at the Bogota Conference on adoption of the pro
posed Convention on Equal Civil and Political Rights. Prolongation
of discussion and argument on this subject can only be an anticlimax.
I he granting of civil and political equality to women constitutes a
“new look” of the world. It is a px-inciple established in the United
Rations Charter—surely the most important political document of our
times.
Mildred Fairchild
International Labor Organization:

Mr. Chairman and members of the. conference, as I have sat listening
for the last few days to the discussions that have gone on in this
room, and as I have sat listening to the panel this morning, I have
been impressed with the fact that conferences like this could well take
place in all sections of the world. I have been impressed with the
fact that the problems that you have discussed in the last 2 days are
problems which are comparable in character if not in degree with the
problems that are being discussed by women in England, in France,
in the other countries of Europe, in India, and—hopefully I say—
are beginning to be discussed even by many women in the Near East,
and, certainly for some time, have been discussed in Latin America.
The likeness of these problems, it seems to me, pointed up by the
very picture which Mrs. Stone has given us this morning. Her heroic
woman—I am afraid I can’t agree with her that we have reached
that stature yet. Sometimes I fumble in my bag for things I want to
get out, and surely I ought to be trained by this time in efficient meth
ods of activity. I don’t eat breakfast in a negligee, usually.
90

But the picture that Mrs. Stone painted is a picture that I think
women in India, certainly women in Europe, many women in Latin
America are beginning to envisage as a necessary goal. I would add
some feet to that heroic figure, however, even though it is pretty tall
now. Here in these United States some 30 percent of the labor force
is composed of women, and a great many of these women are working,
not only for 4 or 5 years after finishing school, but after their children
are reared. In this country, in Europe, and in the East a great many
women not only are carrying family and citizenship responsibilities
but are also contributing actively to the necessary economy of the home
through working (as well as through swinging the market basket).
While perhaps 30 percent of the American labor force consists of
women, there are many countries in which women are 40 and 50 percent
of the labor force. Whether or not that indicates that the older
industrial countries are leading the way for the rest of us, I don’t know.
But in this country the proportion of women who work steadily
through life is increasing, and I am afraid we must expect that it
will continue to increase during the next century. So we must think
of women as having to share in sustaining the economic security of the
home as well as in the upbringing of the children and in the citizenship
responsibilities.
That is a sober prospect, and I, like Mr. Smith, am not at all con
vinced that we are at all able as yet to meet it. But I am convinced
that we have to meet it, and I am convinced that the women of other
parts of the world are likewise having to meet it. Indeed, it even holds
promise of great advantage to us. For as we take responsibility—as
the women of all countries take more and more responsibility—for
making contact with each other, for recognizing our common prob
lems, for taking an active part in improving standards of life and
standards of work and in insuring the peace of the world (all these
I think are interrelated)—it seems to me that, moving into that greater
responsibility, we will make an essential contribution to the future of
society.
Now we have the instruments at hand. You have commented through
these days on the great value that you feel there is in the work of the
Women’s Bureau, the contribution that it makes to women’s organiza
tions all over this country, expanding their knowledge of situations, of
problems, of desirable standards. Let me tell you that your Women’s
Bureau is one of the most effective governmental organizations in the
world in contributing knowledge of these things to the world. I wish
there were a similar women’s bureau in India, in China, in various
European countries, and certainly I hope that the women’s bureaus
that are developing in Latin American countries will be coming along
rapidly.

Here you have instruments which can work together, cannot only
give but can get information and can feed it into comparable inter
national organizations. You are going to hear from the United Na
tions Commission on the Status of Women in a few minutes. That is a
baby organization, as Miss Kenyon will tell you. The International
Labor Organization is older. Most of you know that the ILO was
founded in 1919 and, with the help of the president of the American
Federation of Labor, Mr. Gompers, as well as with European and
English ideas, functioned for 25 years. It was founded under the
League of Nations and affiliated with it; it is the one organization
which survived the war, has continued on to the present day as an
affiliate of the United Nations, and is the first of the great specialized
agencies.
The work of those 25 years has been in no sense lost. I came into this
organization only 2 years ago, and I found it a going concern, with a
great body of practice, of knowledge, of established procedure, and a
tremendous body of international standards in labor and labor law
which are a great contribution to the developing international law of
the world. The ILO has about 86 international conventions, as we call
them, or agreements covering hours of work, social insurance, child
labor, industrial health, safety and hygiene, vocational training, em
ployment and unemployment, maternity protection—the whole range
of problems that workers have.
Of these 86 conventions and an equal number of agreements, that
are standards nations do not obligate themselves to follow but are
interested in—of this great body of standards, the great mass cover
men and women alike. It has always been the policy of the Inter
national Labor Office that to lift the standards of the working people
of the world was the best way to lift the standards of the working
women of the world.
Nevertheless, there are certain problems that are specifically wom
en’s problems, and such a question as maternity protection is certainly
the outstanding one. Do you realize that there are 51 nations in this
world that have legislation today providing maternity leave, maternity
benefits, and security of employment during the period of leave?
Fifty-one nations outside the United States. Not all of them have the
same standards. But some 25 have substantially the same provisions as
those of the third international convention which was adopted in
Washington at the first meeting of the ILO in 1919.
This body of material is dynamic in character. It is possible to re
vise it. Next June, for example, the regulations concerning night
work for women, which have been ratified as conventions by some 34
countries, will be revised for the second time, in the interest of greater
flexibility to allow certainly a two-shift system of work, and in the
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interest of exempting certain professional and technical people who
work in industry. This convention covers only women in industry.
There are new problems eternally coming up. The problem of equal
pay is probably going to be laid on the doorstep of the International
Conference very soon. I think Miss Kenyon will probably have a
little more to say about that, because equal pay has already been dis
cussed in the Commission on the Status of Women, and it is at the
moment being discussed in the Economic and Social Council of the
United Nations. But equal pay is a subject which the ILO has dis
cussed repeatedly, has taken gentle, cautious steps forward to try and
move it to the point where it might be looked upon as a recognized
standard. There is more that needs to be done, and I think we will be
doing it soon.
Last summer there was laid upon us by our Conference the responsi
bility for studying and working on the problems of the woman with
the double responsibility you were discussing yesterday morning: the
woman who has a home and who works 8 hours a day in addition to
caring for that home. She, and not the part-time worker, is the typical
working woman the world over, much as we wish it might be the latter.
Therefore we must attack on an international scale the very prob
lems you are dealing with here. But may I say that I know of no
body of women in the world more able to attack those problems than
American women, if I may judge from this conference.
I, therefore, would lodge a plea with you not only that you recog
nize that women elsewhere in the world, have such problems, but that
you recognize that your responsibilities as citizens call upon you to
remember their problems and study them and ally yourselves with
them. By this process I think you will increasingly find that you are
following one of the paths that is essential to reach the goal.
Dorothy Kenyon
U. N. Commission on the Status of Women:

It is a familiar slip of the tongue to say “United States” when one
means “United Nations.” Secretary Marshall finally compromised on
“United Stations.” I suppose it is appropriate that the baby should
speak last, as the baby is growing, and in very husky fashion. You
heard our chairman just a little while ago say that this sounded like a
self-congratulatory meeting, we were all saying how fine everything
was; so, if you don’t mind my pursuing my natural bent, I should like
to introduce at this point a sour note.
The woman of the future may very well be what Mrs. Stone says she
is, and we like to think that that is the woman of the United States and
of the world as well. But you sit around a table with women from
14 other countries besides your own, who come from all parts of the
world, and you realize right away that the picture is very much more

complex than it appears to us here in the United States, that there are
shades and shades of difference. It takes a little international diet
of that sort to make us fully appreciate the problems that women face
all over the world. In order to understand, we have to sit down at
the same table with the Chinese woman, with the Indian woman, with
the women from Latin America, with the woman from Syria, with the
woman from Byelo-Russia, with the women from Europe, and so on.
Our Commission is very diverse, and yet completely agreed, because
the plank on which we stand is that very simple statement in the Char
ter of the United Nations, “fundamental freedoms for all, without dis
tinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” We are concerned with
that part of the plank which has to do with people who happen to be
women.
We are united in our aims. We have been trying to hammer out at
our last session at Lake Success a practical program for giving our
selves and the rest of the women of the world the key to those freedoms.
We all recognize that the first key in a democratic society, of course,
is the vote. Woman suffrage is the key whereby we may unlock all
the other freedoms. So we use that as our basic Number One point
in our platform.
There are still 22 countries in the world where women do not now
have that basic freedom, and so our Commission with its little bow
and arrow is moving upon those 22 countries. They are located,
except for Switzerland and Portugal, mainly in the Middle East and
Latin America. Those are the two black areas on our map, and
we are not going to give them very many years, because, as I say,
the child is growing rapidly, and the vote is the first key to unlock
the box of freedom.
So we are only giving those countries a few years. They must
hurry up and give women the vote. Then following that, and so
closely related to it that it is almost impossible to distinguish the
two, is the use that you make of the vote, the extent of your par
ticipation in government, I think it is fine to be able to look around
and decide on the right man to vote for, but why not the right man
or woman to vote for? Mr. Smith, you forgot that.
So we are also concerned in our Commission with the need of
getting women to come out of their apathy and to increase, greatly
increase, their participation in all aspects of government, both as
citizens and also as members of government, in all its various
attributes.
We are also concerned about education, because you can’t be an
intelligent voting citizen in a democracy unless you have at least a
minimum of education, and there is an enormous amount of illiteracy
in the world. Now it is true, of course, that illiteracy is shared by
little boys as well as by little girls, but they have a strange habit
94

sometimes of educating little boys, pushing them forward, and tending
to forget the little girls. And our Commission intends that hence
forth there shan’t be any such oversight.
In the field of economic rights and opportunities there is also a
very large area to be covered. Our Commission has decided that of
all the various economic problems the problem of equal pay for equal
work is probably the most important. We made a particular point
of that at our last Commission meeting. It has since been made a
point of in the last session of the Economic and Social Council.
We have called upon the ILO to assist us in getting, at the facts and
in formulating ways and means of bringing about, not only that
simple act of justice to women, but what is also the establishment of
our economic system on a sound basis. Because, as has been said,
when you have a group that are undercutting, they tend to drag
down the whole wage scale.
So this is a battle not only for women but for men as well. For
tunately the men are beginning to realize it. You will notice that
when Pauline Newman was talking about trade unions, she looked
at me when she said trade unions worked for equal pay. Well might
she have looked at me because she and I have had many discussions
on that point, and she knows that I have read many trade union
agreements in which inequality in pay was actually written right
into the agreement.
So we still have a job to do to educate trade union men, and let’s not
be too complacent about that, either. My tendency is to let the chips
fall where they may, you see.
And then there are other matters, too. We hope to create new
international law. There are many hardships that women suffer from
as the result of conflicts in laws between different countries, particularly
in the fields of nationality, domicile, marriage, and divorce. We hope
to pick up the task of the Treaty of Montevideo, which Miss Bernar
dino has already alluded to, and to make that type of treaty and others
that may flow from these same matters into world-wide international
treaties. We have a tremendous job in front of us in respect to that,
but it is going to be very useful in helping married women, who we
all agree do suffer in many countries of the world from special dis
abilities and who greatly need help on that account.
How can we carry out any part of this program ? We have no power
whatsoever. We are a part of the United Nations and we share that
little disability of powerlessness with the United Nations. There is
only one way in which we can carry out any of our program for funda
mental freedoms, and that is by virtue of our appeal to public opinion
and the support that we get from public opinion.
If the ladies from 42 to 69 want to have a job, all they need do is to
organize public opinion in all the countries of the world in support of

the program of the Commission on the Status of Women, and I can
promise them that those 27 years of their lives will he happily and
busily engaged. They may even die a little sooner, though I doubt it.
We seem to be a little tougher than the male, and perhaps a healthy bit
of work—since work is good for our health—may help us live even
longer.
In any event we need the support of public opinion. We need to
have you know what we are doing, support what we are doing, tell us
if we are wrong, because occasionally even we may bo wrong, and go
ahead in your communities and put across these principles. And we
are starting to work on that sort of thing right now and I want you to
know about it. I want you to see if you think it is a good idea.
This is a technique which, Miss Fairchild, we stole from the ILO
and a few other organizations that have done the same thing. We
decided that there was no point in our Commission’s forever meeting
m New York City and discussing things in a vacuum, passing fine
resolutions, and so forth and so on. We just couldn’t remain little
provincial New Yorkers. We had to get out into the world and get
into those areas of the world where women need help the most, so that
we might see and have our own views in regard to these matters
enriched by contacts with people in other places, so that the people in
those places might have a chance to get close to us and talk to us and
tell us about their problems, so that we could mobilize the public
opinion of the world, particularly in those areas where help is
needed most.
So we decided to hold regional conferences. We want to be a
peripatetic Commission that travels around the world. That is what
the ILO has done, and Mildred Fairchild will agree, I am sure, that it
has been one of the most rewarding techniques of the ILO.
We had a little trouble, of course, in winning support for the idea
on the score of expense. But, then, on the last day of our Commission
meeting we had a most delightful invitation from the Government of
Lebanon, inviting us to meet there at our next meeting in the spring
of 1949, and agreeing to pay all the extra expenses. That wonderful
invitation from Lebanon means that our next meeting can be held in
the heart of the Middle East. A little bit later, perhaps, we can go to
Latin America.
So you see, this matter of the 22 countries where women do not have
the vote is almost a footnote of history which we have already moved
beyond, because I give them 3 or 4 more years and that wiil be the
end of that. After that all we will have to work for is to see that
women use the key to freedom which they have won.
Now, the importance of this meeting in Lebanon is just this: Not
only do we want to have the Commission meet there, building our
meeting around this matter of the right to vote and the matter of
96

equal pay, which, together with the nationality treaty, are going
to be the three principal items on our agenda; but over and above
that, we want to have as many as possible of the women’s organiza
tions of the world, the international women’s organizations, and those
that are located in those areas plan to hold their annual—or whatever
it may be—meetings at the same time that we meet, so that we may
have a real meeting of minds with the women of the world, and cer
tainly with the women of that particular part of the world.
I want you to know that, and I want you to take it back to the
groups to which you belong and see what you can do to help us
in building up these women’s international organization meetings that
we want to take place. And in case any of you should hesitate a little
bit, may I tell you that Lebanon in the spring is one of the most beau
tiful countries in the world. And while I can’t do anything about
the cost of getting there, I can eliminate time for you by suggesting
that you fly. I would like, therefore, to have as much support as
possible from the women’s organizations of the United States, be
cause I think we are great organizers. We do know how to organize
as the women of no other country in the world do. We have learned
that. Let us put our backs to this job so that when the Commission
goes out to Lebanon it will be to meet wflth a real convocation of the
women of the world.
Harrison Smith:

I think Dorothy Kenyon made the greatest understatement of the
day. She spoke of the Commission on the Status of Women as using
a little bow and arrow. I should not like to be on the receiving
end of that arrow, if Miss Kenyon directs it.
But now perhaps the chairman can say a few words.
Just before the New Masses gave up the ghost—I might say from
my standpoint, somewhat happily, although it did perform some
valuable functions, and whether it gave up the ghost because of the
F. B. I. looking through the window or because of financial troubles,
I can’t discover. In its last issues it published a two-piece article
titled “Woman against Myth.” I wonder if any of you have ever
seen it. It is an extraordinary and bitter article, written by a woman
named Betty Millard, about the status that woman has achieved in
the United States. There is a great deal of truth in what Miss Millard
says. I think perhaps her most bitter statement is that women have
yet to achieve one right in the United States, and that is the right to
be lynched because they are women.
We are so apt to regard the ability of women to get together in
organizations and in clubs as a victory that I am afraid we don’t
realize how little they can sometimes achieve. As I sat here today

I suddenly thought of the women’s movement, not as a battle, but as
a tidal wave; and an appalling idea that is, too.
Nevertheless the movement is in a curious way a tidal wave.
Women now are over half the population of the United States. We
crossed the border 2 or 3 years ago, and I presume in the world at
large women far outnumber the men; in England today there are
almost 5 million extra women.
In my small experience since I became a crusader in this movement,
I have been sometimes startled. For example, I went for the New
York Times Forum to the Pelham Women’s Club the other day, and
I thought the ladies were charming and intelligent; I thought the work
they were doing for charity, and so on, was admirable. But finally
I asked them how many women in Pelham were members of the Board
of Selectmen, and they said, “None.” For the first time they showed
violent interest, because a roar went up that shook the windows. Then
I asked them how many women in Pelham were on the Board of
Education. “One,” the answer came. It isn’t that they don’t want
to get on such Boards. They don’t know how to get on them.
Through the radio and through editorials and articles in magazines,
I am receiving a remarkable mail. They are extraordinarily interest
ing, these letters. They range from 1 page to maybe a 10-page letter
from some woman who wants to tell me how bitter her experiences in
life and work have been. So that this movement, while it is a quiet
tidal wave, is sometimes an angry one. And I don’t think that women
can achieve what they want without realizing the hostility that lies
around them in this fight. There is a great deal of hostility on the
part of men against women’s gaining more power or opportunities for
work.

February 19 Afternoon Session
CONFERENCE SUMMARY

Summary of February 17 Morning Session, Thelma Mills
Summary of February 17 Afternoon Session—American Women on the Job,
Bess Bloodworth
Summary of February 17 Evening Session, Dollie Lowther
Summary of February 18 Morning Session—Working Women: Their Home
Obligations, M. Eunice Hilton.
Summary of February 19 Morning Session—Working Women: Their Citizen
ship Responsibilities, Olya Margolin
Concluding Address, David Morse, Undersecretary of Labor

SUMMARY OF FEBRUARY 17 MORNING SESSION
Thelma Mills, Director of Student Affairs for Women, University of Missouri

ITH my invitation to attend the conference on “The American
Woman—Her Changing Role as Worker, Homemaker and Citi
zen” came Great. Expectations. And upon my arrival Tuesday,
this anticipation was heightened by Miss Miller’s request that I sum
marize the first morning’s session. Perhaps she wished one Missourian
to report on another Missourian, our President; and she may also
have known that she was asking a Washington Stater to report on her
Federal Judge (for I was among his Inland Empire constituency,
and I well remember the West Coast Hotel case on Minimum Wage in
1937). Whatever her reason, it is my privilege to summarize our first
session together.
President Truman keynoted the conference: he expressed his pride
in the women who are serving so capably in international affairs, thus
giving form and substance to the social, economic, and spiritual life
of our country. He commented upon the success which women have
attained in social legislation, in greater economic status, in higher
education for women, and in civil and political rights, yet challenged
us to effective work on the many unfinished tasks. These problems are
being studied but they cannot be accomplished at once. He cautioned
us, however, to make our goals known and to persist in demanding
action toward them, for a “better life for all our people.”
The forward look was emphasized by Secretary Schwellenbach. In
his words, “This is not merely a one hundredth anniversay celebration.

I’d like to see you make this meeting a declaration of purposes of
women’s organizations in the United States.” Yes, a declaration that
we will expand our economy; that we are going to see that we have
prosperity; and that we can have peace and happiness and comfort for
all. Ours is this opportunity. The problems of today fall upon
women of America and require that women take the leadership to
tell the people of America what they need to be told to carry out the
program on which we here decide.
We are here, then, to take stock of the future. I should like to repeat
one of the Secretary’s opening remarks, namely that the President
and the Navy Band came, not by accident, but by “realization on the
part of the President of the importance of the solution of problems
within the sphere in which women’s organizations are interested.”
Hence it becomes our job “to study the economic position of women
and strengthen their opportunities.” We are privileged then to carry
on the building of “a system of morale of civic honor” on which only a
beginning has been made.
Since we as women no longer have to feel inferior, because we have
full political status (the right to vote and hold office), we must use
that status for the general welfare. There are still battles to be
fought, and we can lead the way. We can, by way of example, call
attention to types of discrimination and see that something is done
about them. I liked the Secretary’s illustration: In December 1940
he was astounded to find that there had never been a woman and never
any other than a white person on any jury in his Federal District
Court. And he saw to it that women and other than white people
did serve on juries. And he found that the same right results could
be reached by a jury when no distinction was made with respect to
race or sex.
What would most surprise our noble women of 1848 if they could
return in 1948 ? Probably the changes in the economic field: (1) they
would find women as administrators of labor laws in many of our
States; (2) they would find among us women with the highest educa
tion and skills in many fields; (3) they would find women close to
30 percent of the working population, as against less than 10 percent
a hundred years ago, and would find them in hundreds of occupations.
Yes, we account for high percentages of the workers in many fields—
75 percent of our teachers, 98 percent of our nurses, and 90 percent
of our medical laboratory technicians. But we still have a job to do
in attaining equal pay for equal work; this is a matter of simple
justice.
What are the problems yet to solve? (1) Wider opportunity for
training and placement are especially important; (2) minimum-wage
legislation; and (3) shortening of legal hours of work for women
in many States.
100

The job ahead—it’s ours to do with the help of the trained staffs
and technicians of the Labor Department.
Miss Miller gave us our over-all picture of “Women at Work.”
Recently I had the privilege of working on a publication called
“Women Go to Work at Any Age,” and Miss Miller showed us that,
with our changing pattern, women 35 years of age and over are fur
nishing the bulk of those who have swelled the ranks of working
women in recent years. Employment has been stable at least in the
sense that jobs have been available even though the shift has been
from the better paying factory jobs into the less well-paying service
trades.
Anyone who can make facts and figures as interesting as Miss
Miller can is really a rare individual. As I thought back over her
talk, these were the items that came to mind (even at 12:30 a. m.,
following a wonderfully stimulating afternoon and evening) and
without benefit of notes:
1. Today about 17 million women are working—28 percent of the
entire labor force.
2. Few women today who want to work are without jobs. Eight
times as many women are in the labor force today as there were 80
years ago (when our first census figures on women workers became
available).
3; Today 46 percent of women working are married and an addi
tional 16 percent are widowed or divorced.
4. There are greater occupational opportunities for women—though
there are still professions where it is a handicap to be a woman.
Three-fourths of employed women are in 23 occupations.
5. Transitions have taken place from rural to urban life; from
dressmaker to operative in the apparel industry; from unpaid home
worker to the paid industrial worker. The women tend to concen
trate in the “traditional” fields of women’s work.
6. There has been great hesitancy in furnishing training for women
workers. Women need the returns from the most skilled work they
can do.
7. And strangely enough—we know that women still need to work
regardless of marital status. According to a Women’s Bureau report
92 percent of employed women who live with their families contribute
regularly toward family expense.
8. Women are entitled to the widest opportunity for training in
order to make the most of themselves as employed persons and to dis
charge their financial obligations to their dependents.
9. Which in turn brings up the whole question of the adequacy of
women’s earnings. Low-wage scales have persisted even to December
1947 when all wage earners in selected manufacturing industries aver785372°—48-

■8

101

aged $57.54 a week, unskilled men $49.79 a week, but women only
$41.39 per week.
10. We must not permit the threat to general wage levels that un
equal pay to women involves. Let us not be deluded that equal pay
for equal work will come without a struggle. The principle will not
automatically be applied.
I had a college professor and friend who gave us daily at chapel a
capsule or “one minute talk.” Proportionally, that is what I have done
for you—and it has been a rare privilege to report on this program. I
remember the phrase with which my professor used to close meetings:
“Look forward and not backward and lend a helping hand.”

J02

SUMMARY OF FEBRUARY 17 AFTERNOON
SESSION, AMERICAN WOMEN ON THE JOB
Bess Bloodworth, Vice President, Namm’s Inc.1

Miss Kittenhouse, who so ably summarized on Tuesday afternoon,
and I were impressed wTith much the same points in Miss Dickason’s
talk. Some of the homely similes Miss Dickason used struck me forci
bly, as when she reminded us not to take our hard-earned gains for
granted, and warned of that terrible “guilt by consent ” which leads to
indifference to important matters with dire consequences, as evidenced
by the women in Germany and Italy.
Miss Dickason said that she hoped women made as much progress in
t he next hundred years as in the past hundred. One of our goals should
be to be accepted as individuals and to be judged on the basis of our
capabilities and contributions, not our sex, marital status, or economic
need.
She warned, however, that though the broad concept for men and
women as good citizens and good workers may be the same, men and
women are not identical, and there will always be problems relating
to women workers. Farseeing management and Government should
appreciate these problems; women should work at a community and
Federal level to clear any laws that interfere with equal status, and
should extend—not ignore—those laws which bring benefits to women
and invariably to men as well.
She said that we should educate men to the fact that we have not
merely taken over their jobs in industry but have moved outside the
home with our own jobs—sewing, cooking, teaching, designing, adorn
ing the world and ourselves that we may have more beauty.
Miss Dickason brought out the advantages that have come to women
through trade-union membership, not only in material gains, such as
better wages, vacations, holidays, etc., but in development of leadership
qualities which have contributed to better citizenship and benefited the
community.
She asked for better understanding of the labor movement by all
women and asked us to remember that the dramatic strikes and dis
putes overshadow the many good relations that have existed for years
between management and unions. Such understanding will improve
our race relations, as well as our labor relations, and will help women
to participate in the life of our times—our greatest problem.
1 In Miss Bloodworth’s absence, her paper was read by Mrs. Dorothy Leavell, Washing
ton State Department of Labor and Industries.

103

Miss Dickason pointed up the need for facilities for the women who
run homes and work—the disadvantages of night and Saturday work
for those women, and the need to retain some of the considerations
and aids that were given working women during the war when women
workers were a “must.”
.
Requirements of a job, she said, not merely whether it can he done
by a woman, determine whether a job is unskilled or skilled. Real
progress, Miss Dickason said, means full employment and properly
paid jobs for everyone in our society who wants to work.
The points brought out in discussion were:
1. The need for study and action where advisable on night work.
2. The need for adoption of good minimum wages as a floor for
wages but not as a substitute for collective bargaining.
3. The need for retention and extension of present gains: equal pay
laws, FEPC, fair labor standards, getting nurses and others under
Social Security.
4. The need for child-care centers; advantage of part-time work for
women with families.
5. The need for extending protection of the Fair Labor Standards
Act to telephone operators in cities with less than 500 telephone sta
tions, now exempt from coverage of the Act.
6. The advantages, especially to the young, of conferences such as
this conference.
7. The need for the Women’s Bureau as a fact-finding and directing
agent for women; that it is “an indispensable agency of good Govern
ment.”
Miss Magee of the National Consumers League gave an interesting
story of our legislative and political progress in the last hundred years.
She, too, cautioned us about the lowering of standards at the local
level which took place while we were fighting a war on a national level.
She pointed out our obligation also to raise national standards to
meet the ILO requirements if we are to be effective in the total world,
and she asked that women’s organizations and women as individuals
take positive action to retain and extend our gains.
Wholesome features of the session were the good sportsmanship
and the sense of humor portrayed by the women in all the activities
represented. As long as we can take ourselves seriously yet humor
ously, we have hojje for the next 100 years.

104

SUMMARY OF FEBRUARY 17 EVENING SESSION
Dollie Lowther, Educational Director, Laundry Workers Joint Board of
Greater New York, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

I am not calm, cool, and collected, but always get a great deal out
of these conferences, and today I certainly got something from Miss
Mills because she says that when she arrived and was given her assign
ment, she was thrilled. When I arrived and was given my assign
ment— well, I have been tense ever since.
I am to cover the evening session of this conference. I have not
taken everything from Dean Thompson’s speech, and I am reminded
of Miss Solomon, a young woman from India, whom I heard lead a
panel. When someone said something that was not quite clear, she
looked at him—or her—and said, “Profound.” So that, if I have left
out anything in Dean Thompson’s speech which you may have con
sidered important, just note that to me it must have been “Profound.”
I am sure that one million women who are striving for equality will
look to this conference and appreciate the work that the Women’s
Bureau has done, and will think of the contributions made by all of
you.
^
.
I am going to read a short resume of Tuesday evening’s session. The
addresses were all informative and inspiring. The session was pre
sided over by Assistant Secretary of Labor Gibson, who, catching the
spirit of truth which prevailed throughout the conference, generously
gave credit to women of the Bureau for the well-laid plans, and even
for the preparation of his own part in the program. Since, as pointed
out by Dean Thompson, women have not fallen into the men’s “habit
0f one”—one woman on a committee with six men—there was, of
course, participation by more than one man in this evening session.
The other male participant was Congressman Stevenson, labeled by
most of us as a friend, but, as all men, one to be steered and counseled
by the women if he is to serve the best interests of women.
Congressman Stevenson paid tribute to the pioneers of Seneca Falls,
those women whose names have been repeated over and over during
the conference—Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Stanton, Susan Anthony,
Martha Wright, Mary McClintock.
He, of course, gave the man’s slant on what happened at Seneca Falls
and reported the incident of the locked window which had to be opened
by the young Yale professor. But most of us will remember Lisa
Sergio’s version—that the women had experienced locked windows
before and had brought the young man for that particular purpose.

105

rI he Congressman also paid a well-deserved tribute to Miss Frieda
Miller, leader of this conference.
Throughout his talk, he pointed out instances of cooperation be
tween men and women. From the beginning, women had the coopera
tion of men of vision and courage. Thus—the well-deserved salute to
James Mott, who chaired the Seneca Falls meeting, to the men who
attended the convention and signed the suffrage declaration, and to
William Lloyd Garrison, who, as Miss Sergio pointed out, gave up
the privilege of speaking in Europe on slavery because of the dis
crimination against and segregation of the women accompanying him.
Miss Sergio’s contribution did much to dramatize the historical facts
prior to and after Seneca Falls. .
The gem of the evening, of course, was Dean C. Mildred Thompson’s
presentation of a chapter in the history of freedom (1848 to 1948), in
which she covered the development of the rights of women as one of
the important episodes in the struggle for greater human freedom, an
advance in fundamental principles of our civilization which received
form and expression in the Declaration of Independence.
The status of women in each stage was pointed out by Dean Thomp
son as a part of the total social and cultural movement of the time.
I he movement for women’s rights is one phase of a changing society,
one aspect of the continuing struggle for greater freedom of the in
dividual—for equality among all persons.
Our falling short of the goal set by the women of Seneca Falls does
not mean that we have failed. A look behind will give us hope and
courage to press on. Dean Thompson pointed out some of the sign
posts of the measured miles beginning at the convention for women’s
rights. Their assumption was based on the Declaration of Independ
ence : “All men [and women are created] equal.” There were many
violations of this principle.
Dean Thompson felt that the signposts in the advancement of women
had been many: first—in the extension of legal and property rights—
married women were gradually given the right to control property,
to dispose of it, and to make contracts; second—they were granted the
right of equal guardianship of their children; and, third—the right
to vote, the 19th amendment, which was the real highlight of the past
100 years.
The advancement in education was another signpost. In the 1830’s
there was a distinct awareness of the needs for better education for
women. In 1865 we had the founding of the first women’s educational
institute with standards comparable to the high standards of the best
colleges for men. But even today we can’t say that equality in edu
cational opportunities prevails. There is no real coeducation in the
country.
106

Dean Thompson felt that the failure of women to reach top places
of achievement in certain fields was certainly not due to the reasons
given by the pseudopsychoanalyst of the day. She felt that there were
many obstacles to, and real reactions against, greater equality of
men and women.
The changes brought about by the industrial revolution were never
dreamed of by the women of Seneca Falls. Home and industry have
been transformed, and our manner of living revolutionized by the in
dustrial revolution which is not yet ended.
Women’s organizations have been a great force in aiding the ad
vancement of the development of women. The church was the first
organization in which women learned associated effort. Other or
ganizations that assume a conspicuous place on this road of progress
are clubs of leisure-time activities, associations of political force and
civic responsibility, such as the League of Women Voters, and, of
course, the trade unions. But failure of women to assume full posi
tions of power still is a problem.
Dean Thompson felt that the force of women in society was indirect
rather than direct. Women’s development, powers, and rights can
not be evaluated apart from the whole of society and the forces which
control it. Women as persons are still young. Who would dare to
predict what the next 100 years may bring forth !
I started on my quest to discover “what is truth?” about 8 years ago,
and I started in the trade union. A quotation says “Stay a moment for
some answers,” and I have been allowed to stay at various places for
a few answers. Certainly this conference has been a moment in which
I have gotten a lot of answrers from those who have contributed to it.
From the Women’s Bureau I have gotten some of the answers, and
now I am on to Cleveland for another moment in which to get some
more answers to my famous question, “What is truth ?”

107

SUMMARY OF FEBRUARY 18 MORNING SESSION
WORKING WOMEN—THEIR HOME OBLIGATIONS
M. Eunice Hilton, Dean of Women, Syracuse University

Miss Miller and friends, I should like to express my appreciation
for being in attendance at this conference. I know that I owe my
invitation to Pauline Newman with whom I served on the Retail
Trade Minimum Wage Board in New York.
This type of conference is of inestimable value to women and es
pecially at this time when women are facing problems as difficult as
they have faced at any time in their history as workers.
At the close of the Wednesday morning session of our conference
on the subject of Working Women—Their Home Obligations, many
favorable comments were heard. The audience had responded with
enthusiasm to both speakers and to the lively period of audience partic
ipation which followed the talks.
Miss Kyrk’s keen analysis of the variations among wage-earning
women with respect to home responsibilities was thought-provoking.
Two points that she made concerning single women workers may be
reemphasized with profit. The first is that single women earners
represent a period in the economic life-history of almost all women.
Speaking in broad terms this means that almost every woman must
be prepared to be economically independent for some part of her
life. It is too bad that education yet has to catch up with this fact.
She needs vocational and educational guidance, as was pointed out
from the floor. Such guidance is not yet available to a sufficient
extent. But although it is fairly well established that the presence
of single women in the labor force “is accepted and approved” and
(hat their earnings should be “sufficient to maintain them at an ac
ceptable level without subsidy in any form from family or others,” the
second thing of importance is that many single women in particular
make insufficient wages to support themselves properly. If the
fathers of these single women workers could only see that instead
of their daughters “helping out at home,” they, the fathers, actually
are subsidizing, not their daughters, but the establishments where
their daughters work, some changes might be made.
Discussion from the floor pointed up a major problem concerning
the married woman worker who is in and out of the labor market,
depending upon her personal circumstances. We have made almost
no provision to assist the woman whose skills or knowledge are not
108

adequate at the time she wishes to reenter the labor market. The
widowed, divorced, or married woman worker who wishes to work
or who must work because of economic necessity faces this problem fre
quently. Time and effort must be given to helping her maintain or
relearn her skills and to finding adequate job opportunities.
Miss Kyrk’s discussion of the married woman worker very properly
took as its starting point the question of the work load in the home.
She dismissed this question as irrelevant to women earning enough
to hire help. I must admit that my sympathy goes out to the women
to whom she referred as those “likely to be publicized as successfully
combining marriage, children, a home, and a career.” In their behalf,
perhaps we should remember what one such successful career woman
called to my attention: that before she was considered a successful
woman she could not afford household help. She solved the problem
of the home-work load through her own efforts and so is now pointed
to with pride. However, the solution of the problem of the home
work load is basic to the success, happiness, and health of the woman
w’orker today.
An important statement, likely to be overlooked in Miss Kyrk’s
paper, is that there are two goals we should be attempting to attain
where married women workers are concerned. To put it simply, we
want the married women who can work without undue cost to society
to do so, and those who cannot do so to be cared for otherwise. Her
discussion left us to ponder upon a number of things of import to
women, and because they are of import to women, to all society. As
always, we look to the Women’s Bureau for the information and
research basic to the solution of many of these problems. Women in
a group, privileged such as this one has been in attending this confer
ence, have an obligation to take back to their organizations, for review
and discussion, the problems presented in Miss Kyrk’s paper. Thought
and effort will be necessary to discover the full implications of the
points she made.
Dr. Tead’s paper received hearty acclamation from the audience.
His discussion of the personal, domestic, and economic influences upon
women’s present-day social patterns struck many chords of harmony
with his audience. Most of us would agree with him that personal
fulfillment in modern life is somewhat more difficult for women than
for men, and that one cogent reason is the variety of the social patterns
of women’s relation to society. On the other hand, it seemed to me
that he may have given women somewhat too much sympathy here and
man a bit too much blame. Man has a problem, too, for he still bears
the brunt of the responsibility for family support. His guilt feelings,
when he cannot measure up to this demand well enough, can surely
match women’s feeling of insecurity and confusion in our modern
society. Men may be blamed for failing to give women the apprecia

109

tion they need, but women should be blamed for failing to understand
men’s problems too.
We would agree, too, with Dr. Tead’s point that whether modern
home conditions are unfortunate or not depends upon how these con
ditions are dealt with. Several participants in the discussion pointed
out respectively that home work is sometimes the equivalent of leisure
time activity to the working woman, that is, an outlet for creativity,
and that the working woman may have better home conditions because
she is forced to manage better. Others had practical suggestions for
meeting certain problems in the home by encouraging additional
service occupations.
In the economic field, Dr. Tead frankly stated, women are strictly
limited as yet, and he noted that these limitations operated not only
as to job status and level, but in relation to opportunity for creativity.
He was specific in his platform for remedies. His suggestions were
practical and well accepted, although some deserve consideration of
advantages and disadvantages. His suggestion for the development
of part-time work opportunities is one of these. Many safeguards
would have to accompany the achievement of this really desirable
goal.
The suggestion of nursery schools for the children of working
mothers drove home a point that had been made by participants in
earlier discussions. His suggestions to trade unions were significant
and timely.
Many of the delegates here have referred to women’s divisions in
some trade unions which are largely male. We hope for the day
when “women’s divisions” on the basis of sex may disappear as un
necessary in all organizations. This, however, is a goal. In the
meantime, organized women’s units within organizations are indis
pensable for defining goals and working out methods for attaining
them.
No one in attendance at this meeting will forget Dr. Tead’s plea
for a full life, a whole individual, and opportunity for creativity.
A sentence or two may be worth quoting on many an occasion:
“As long as there is fragmented living, there will be
frustrated lives,”
and
“Always to take from life less than it can offer of richness and
personal unfolding is to deny one’s very selfhood, or at
least to hold it too cheaply.”
Yes, Wednesday morning left us with food for thought and action.

110

SUMMARY OF FEBRUARY 19 MORNING SESSION
WORKING WOMEN: THEIR CITIZENSHIP
RESPONSIBILITIES
Olya Margolin, Washington Representative, National Council of
Jewish Women

I am honored and privileged to have this opportunity to make this
report. However, I didn’t have quite as much time as I would have
liked to have had to prepare it. Between 12:15 and 1: 30 I had to
prepare the report and have my lunch; you can gather I didn’t have
much lunch.
The discussion this morning indicated that the theme, “Working
Women, Their Citizenship Responsibilities,” presents a serious chal
lenge not only to the women of the United States, hut also to the
women of the world. The chairman of the panel expressed his con
cern about the attack on the position of women which developed
immediately following the war. During the war women were able
to consolidate their position, but now there are evidences of attempts
to undermine their status. It was emphasized that the passage of
the 19th Amendment did not end the struggle but was a beginning
of a tremendous effort on the part of women to acquire rights
due them as citizens of their country. It was evident from the
chairman’s statement that women between the ages of 42 and 69
constitute a potential power which must be utilized in the battle
for women’s rights. It was suggested that women could be a tre
mendous force toward the achievement of peace and in the abolition
of war and that they should participate more fully in the manage
ment of our government. Mr. Smith felt that the renewed efforts
of women to improve their status must not take the form of war
against man but the form of cooperation between men and women
in solving these problems.
Mrs. Stone visualized the American woman as a woman of heroic
proportions who has learned to organize her time in such a way as to
be able to assume and successfully discharge her responsibilities as a
worker, homemaker, and citizen. While women are as yet not
numerous in public office, they are good citizens and willing to work
shoulder to shoulder with men, because they know everyone counts
in a democracy.
We were also told that women’s efforts for better working condi
tions benefit men as well. The difficulties women encounter in the labor

111

field are that there is some opinion prevailing that they are an unstable
labor supply, but the fact that they now constitute a large part of
our labor force is a refutation of this contention and a favorable
factor in helping women to maintain and improve their position. It
was further pointed out that women are becoming more active in the
policymaking bodies of the trade-union movement and that they are
also very active in legislative activities and community projects.
I he discussion of the status of women in other countries as outlined
by Miss Bernardino, Judge Kenyon, and Miss Fairchild indicated that
Mrs. Stone’s conception of the American woman is something that is
being envisaged by women in Europe and other parts of the world and
might be the woman of the future. We were told of the efforts which
have gone on and are going on in all parts of the world to make it possi
ble for women to assume and sucessfully carry out the responsibilities
of homemaker, worker, and citizen. Dr. Kenyon emphasized the point
that in 22 countries women have as yet not achieved full citizenship
and that woman suffrage is the key to unlock all other freedoms. The
United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is planning to
concentrate most of its efforts on helping the women of all countries to
acquire the right of citizenship and also to develop the kind of under
standing which is necessary for the intelligent use of the vote. In
the field of economic problems Judge Kenyon considered equal pay
for equal work the most important one, and felt it was necessary to edu
cate not only the public but trade-union men to the significance of this
issue. Me were also told that the most effective way in which a pro
gram for fundamental freedoms can be achieved is through public
opinion. The development of this public opinion, Judge Kenyon felt,
was an excellent project for women betwen 42 and 69 to undertake.
It can be fairly accurately said that the general sense of the discus
sion was that women have won for themselves a position in the working
world, but not to the same degree in all countries and in all areas; that
there must be a better understanding among various women’s groups
and among men and women; that there must be a greater body of in
formation as to how women can better participate in government and
in the political life of their countries; that there must be a larger body
of information on how these ends can be achieved; that there must
be better means for channeling such information; that we must re
orient the aproach to the solution of our problems by seeking coopera
tion from the men rather than declaring war upon them. We are
cautioned not to end this conference on a gay note, but rather to
strengthen our determination to broaden and increase our efforts for
the elimination of our many still unsolved problems.
I am a worker, a homemaker, and I hope I am a citizen. I try to
carry out successfully all of these jobs. This morning I sensed a
conflict in views expressed by several of the speakers. Some felt that
112

perhaps some women ought only to be workers and others only home
makers. I for one would never wTant to give up the privilege of being
a homemaker, perhaps only because my little boy frequently says that
there is no use looking for better cooking than mommy’s.
I should also like to point out that I think it is of tremendous ad
vantage to the entire family when the mother is a worker and an active
citizen; because of my activities my 614-year old boy developed such
political acumen that he independently arrived at a choice of a presi
dential candidate and insists at his age that he is going to vote only
for Eisenhower.

113

CONCLUDING ADDRESS
David Morse, Undersecretary of Labor

Miss Miller, Members of the Conference: Mine is a rather pleasant
assignment because I have no set speech and because I have not had
the headache of conscientious research which a gathering of this kind
ordinarily demands.
I know that you will forgive me if I make some casual comments
about some things that strike me as being rather important in terms
of the conference you have been having here for the last 2 or 3 days,
and if I add perhaps one or two other comments that I think worth
reiterating whenever one has this kind of an opportunity.
hirst of all, since your conference is drawing to a close, let me
thank you again on behalf of the Department of Labor for having
come to these sessions. It has been very encouraging to us; from the
reports that I have received I think it is going to prove extremelv
valuable to us. And I hope that it has been worth while for you.
We would appreciate it if, when you leave, you think not only of
the W omen’s Bureau and its importance and the programs which it
projects and which, after your intelligent consideration, either deseives your support or criticism, but of the fact that the Department
as a whole speaks on behalf of these problems which fall within our
jurisdiction and is concerned always for the public interest.
The Department of Labor has an overriding interest in the kind of
issues that you people have been talking about these last 2 or 3 days,
and the resources of all of the Bureaus in this Department and all of
-the Divisions in this Department we hope will always be marshaled
to give support to the programs of the Women’s Bureau or the pro
grams of other bureaus insofar as they may stand the test of being
constructive and worth while, as we believe the programs of the
Women’s Bureau are.
I would like to say that we have a number of difficult bureaucratic
problems in the operations of this Department. I am constantly
surrounded by four walls, papers, telephone calls, and pressures, and
we are constantly concerned about trying to run our business well.
One of our problems always is having enough money to do our job.
I understand that many of you are fairly well informed about that
aspect of our situation, and we hope that you will continue to remain
informed concerning this problem because, without the necessary help
to run the machinery, we just cannot get the job done.
114

We had that problem last year, and fortunately with the assistance
of the Good Lord we came through, and we are hopeful that this year
with His assistance we will be sustained once again. I think it de
serves some thought and some conscientiousness on the part of every
one concerned with the work of the Bureau and the Department.
In the Department we have hoped that out of this meeting will
come some crystallization of ideas and some consensus which will
help you and your organizations and be of assistance to us. I read
the comments and various speeches that have been made, and I have
had reports come back to me. I have been greatly impressed, partic
ularly by the objectives listed here yesterday by Mr. Tead.
I hope you will not mind if I indicate by just a few sentences which
of those points we think will be extremely important for us to give
further consideration to and perhaps recite as a declaration of inten
tion for further action.
The first point that was very well taken was Mr. Tead’s point that
on the economic side all labor unions should allow women equal rights
of membership and should encourage women members in the councils
of union management.
The second point that struck us as being of considerable impor
tance was the granting to women workers, as an accepted practice,
the right to part-time work.
■
Then thirdly, as a public policy over and beyond possible pro
visions in union contracts, there should be immediate consideration
of a social program of maternity subventions under proper safeguards.
Fourthly, the approach of planned parenthood to child bearing and
rearing should be encouraged, that more women may be enabled to
relate the rearing of adequate families to their resources as creators
and builders of happy and successful homes.
■
His next point has to do with making provision on a dignified and
well paid basis for trained women who on either a whole or a part
time basis can qualify as family workers and domestic assistants.
Next, the public educational responsibilities still to be assumed
in relation to this problem are tremendous. I think that they are
fairly obvious. Foremost is the effort to teach boys and young men
about the nature and responsibilities of marriage, of family life,
of fatherhood, of women’s right to self-fulfillment as that is definitely
determined.
Lastly, the principle of the future state must be that every man
and every woman shall be a whole person.
As I read this document, I was terribly impressed with its thought
fulness and its value, and I know that you will not mind my having
made this repetition and my having pointed out these items to which
we are going to give considerable study.

115

With these remarks I will close my participation in this meeting.
Again thank you very much for having come. Thank you very much
for having contributed to the success of the conference. You have
lent us a great deal of encouragement. We are going to do the
best job we know how to do. There will inevitably be mistakes,
but we’ll do the best kind of job we can.
Let us know how you feel about what we are doing. Godspeed
to you all when you go back to the strength of the country—your
home towns.

116

WOMEN’S

II H II 1) A II

CONFERENCE

Conference Keynotes
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES AND FLOOR DISCUSSION

The Social Patterns Which Relate to Women as Workers, Homemakers, Citizens
Women as Workers
Women in Unions
Legislative and Other Standards
Women as Homemakers
Women as Citizens
Cooperation Between Men and Women Is Requisite to the Solution of Social
and Economic Problems
Challenges to the Conference
INDIVIDUAL WOMEN WHO HAVE ADVANCED THE WELFARE AND STATUS OF
WOMEN

785372“—41

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THE SOCIAL PATTERNS WHICH RELATE TO
WOMEN AS WORKERS, HOMEMAKERS, CITIZENS
The women’s movement is only one episode in the world struggle
for freedom.

. . . the development of rights of women in this past century is only
one important episode among many in the long-continuing struggle
for human freedom, for greater freedom. It is another chapter in
the advance of the fundamental principles of our western civilization
which received form and durable expression in the Declaration of
Independence, in the establishment of the young Republic in this
country, and in the principles of the French Revolution.
. . . the status of women is to be regarded in each stage as part of the
total social and cultural movement of the time. It is a distortion of
meaning to think of the movement for women’s rights solely or
primarily as a movement for women, of women, by women. It must
be taken in its wholeness. It is one phase of changing society, one
aspect of the continuing struggle for greater freedom of the individ
ual—all individuals; for equality among persons—all persons.
Personal fulfillment is sought by women equally with men.

. . . with education now extended through high school for an in
creasing majority of both boys and girls . . . women like men are
approaching life with a fuller anticipation of rich, rewarding, and
variegated living than was formerly true. People ask more of life
today, materially and spiritually. The expectation of maximizing
one’s selfhood, of realizing one’s varied potentials of capacity and
interest, or demonstrating one’s functional usefulness to society—all
this is a strong even if often inarticulate demand being made upon
life by women equally with men.
Many men are narrowed by work and business. Many women are
narrowed by home and children—or by jobs and domestic duties. As
long as there is fragmented living, there will be frustrated lives.
Fulfillment is more difficult for women.

To attain a sense of personal fulfillment with which is coupled a
satisfying sense of making a real social contribution has, in short,

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become a driving motive throughout our society to a truly astonishing
degree. Wherein that personal fulfillment comes is no doubt still
somewhat obscure to many. And it may well be true that . . . women
find it harder today to define that fulfillment for themselves than do
men. But the disturbing and provocative influence of this motive
is one of the strongest dynamics of our society. And the very variety
of the social patterns of woman’s relation to society only confuses her
situation the more. . . .
And for women distinctively there is the reality that the urge
to creativity normally includes the desire to hear children and, under
certain conditions, not to bear children. A whole train of conse
quences can follow from this desire with results not only felicitous
on the one hand but yielding insecurities, fears, anxieties, guilt feel
ings and frustrations on the other.
In each individual case how are creative urges—physiological, in
tellectual, moral, and spiritual—all to get reasonably balanced and
adequate expression? For many women in today’s United States,
I venture that this dilemma is harder to resolve than for many men.
Too many women are ready to settle accounts with life too cheaply.

Yet I think in all honesty that another deterrent influence from the
woman’s side has also to he reckoned with, before we try to look for
remedies. I refer to the ever-present danger that too many women may
be willing to settle their accounts with life too cheaply or too easily.
A too ready willingness to adjust to the strong forces opposed to her
attaining a rounded creativity can be for women a resolution which is
no solution. Wherever there is the attitude that to marry, settle down,
and have a family is to solve the individual woman’s problem, there is
a too simple capitulation to conventional influences of the male and
society generally. “Settling down” is a withdrawal from the creative
area, which is, of course, not confined to women.
The American family has a typical life history.

If history should exactly repeat itself, the median age of women at
the date of their first marriage would be 21.6 years, with the husband
slightly less than 3 years older. . . . About 15 percent [of the couples]
would have no children. The first child of the 85 percent wTho have
children would be born about a year after marriage, and in the next
41/2 years, two others. Thus the typical mother would have borne her
final child at the age of 27.2 years. She would have then three chil
dren. For about 11 years she would have at least one under 6. For
13 years, if all survive, she would have three under 18, and for about
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23 years one or more under 18. When the last is 18, the mother will be
45. If the children do not leave home until they marry and marry at
the same age as their parents, she will be 50 or 53 when the family has
declined to its original size of two members. On the basis of present
life expectations it will'continue at this size for 11 more years, and the
wife will probably survive the husband. This mother from the time
she is about 40 will have a declining burden of child care and for
several years before she is 65 a relatively light burden of housework.
Single women earners represent a period in the life history of almost
all women.

Single women earners . . . are not simply a group of working
women. They represent a period in the economic life history of prac
tically all women. Relatively few now go directly from school to
marriage; . . . This period of employment is becoming part of the
accepted life pattern. . . . Their presence in the labor force is ac
cepted and approved. . . . The presumption that the single women
shall earn is practically as well established as that single men shall
do so. . . .
Are their preparation and opportunities adversely affected by the
fact that the duration of their employment is uncertain and that for
many it will be brief ? This situation would not be corrected by “equal
pay.” Nor can “equal” vocational or professional preparation be in
voked as a remedy without examining our presumptions in regard to
the whole life history of women and certainty that our proposal is not
inconsistent with other desired objectives.
The status of many of the younger widowed, divorced, and separated
is similar to that of the single women earners. Those in
middle years face special disadvantages.

The family and economic status of many of the younger divorced,
separated, and widowed women is very similar to that of the
single. . . . But there are others [probably at least a fourth], who
are in the middle years or beyond, whose marriage was not of short
duration and who do have children. ... If they have in effect two
jobs or one and a half, they are at a disadvantage in the labor mar
ket. ... As a group they labor under another disadvantage as com
pared with single women and men of the same age. Few among them
worked continuously before and during their marriage. Many have
returned to the labor market after an absence of several years. Those
whose work before marriage required no special skill or experience
will have suffered least in level of earnings from the discontinuity of
their employment. Those who left a depressed labox market and re

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entered in a boom area or period will have felt no adverse results of
their absence. But there will be some whose leaving and return were
not so fortunately timed. There also will be some whose special skills
and knowledge will have become rusty or obsolete.
In purely quantitative terms, the figures . . . are instructive and
impressive. ... Of a total of nearly 38,000,000 families [in 1946],
just under 29,000,000 were normal families with both parents function
ing. In a little less than one-fifth of these normal families (about
5,000,000) both husband and wife went out to work. And this repre
sented an increase of 2,000,000 such families since 1940. Yet in
families with children under 6 years of age only 9 percent of the wives
worked. Whereas in the 6,600,000 families where a widowed mother
was the breadwinner (or the family was otherwise headed by women)
more than one-third of the women with children under 6 were at work,
and 50 percent of those with children above 6 but under 18 were
working.
The patent fact is that the number of women working away from
home is constantly increasing, although women with young children
tend to go out to work only under urgent money pressures.
The married women—earners and nonearners—pose a variety of
problems.

When we turn ... to the married women in the labor force, ques
tions concerning their homes and families are the first that are gen
erally raised. Are they neglecting, or discharging inefficiently, re
sponsibilities that are theirs by virtue of their marital and parental
status? If they are not, do they discharge them at the expense of
health and leisure? Or have they reduced their housework burden
by alterations in the family mode of living in ways adverse to family
welfare ? Or is it possible that they have found ways of shifting these
responsibilities, or better and more efficient means of discharging them,
which should be made available to and adopted by all wives and
mothers ?
. . . with respect to married women workers . . . we have not clari
fied our value judgments. ... We agree that the single should be in
the labor market and that their responsibility is for self-maintenance.
We agree that the widowed and divorced without children should earn
and that those with children should not single-handed maintain homes
and provide money income. With respect to married women one prin
ciple could surely be defended. No restrictions should be placed upon
their freedom to enter a gainful pursuit.
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. . . we come back to our two problems: which married women who
are not earning could do so without undue sacrifice of health or leisure
and without lowering standards for child care and family living?
Which of the married women currently with jobs are imperilling their
health, sacrificing their leisure, or lowering their family’s well-being?
The social interest is to decrease both of these groups.
There is clearly a period, increasing in length, in the lives of more
and more married women when there is no responsibility for children
and when the burden of housework is light. There are also those who
marry and have no children. Why are so many of these women absent
from the labor force? . . . Our social aim is the elimination of a
leisure class and the attainment instead of an equal distribution of
leisure that we hope all will use well.
Only an eighth of the able-bodied married women . . . had jobs
in 1940. Are the seven-eighths of the married women without jobs
employing their knowledge and skills to the greatest social advantage ?
Does their withdrawal from the labor force make for a higher level
of personal development, child care, and family living?
The married women with limited family responsibilities who are
not earning probably fall into three classes, or the decisions of all in
varying degrees are affected by three considerations. One is their
own, their husband’s, their associates’ unfavorable attitude toward
gainful employment of married women. More potent a reason for not
earning is that they do not want to. They prefer their leisure to what
their earnings would buy for themselves and their families. Here
are the lazy whose claims upon the income of others enable them to
be lazy. Here also are those who find their level of living satisfactory,
and judge, perhaps rightly, that more things and less leisure would
not add to the sum total of family happiness. A third consideration
is closely related, the kind of job they could get and how much they
could earn. This last question is especially pertinent for the woman
of 45 or 50 who is contemplating a return to the labor market after
20 to 25 years away from it . . . in the community where her husband
is working, that is, in a geographically limited market. It is not sur
prising that many conclude that what they would gain by earning
would not be worth what it cost.
The plight of idle women, of women over 40, of mothers with grown
children is especially severe.

There are still women idle, women left in some households with no
children to care for or with others paid to do the job for them—women

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idle because there are no household arts left to give them a sense of
creative productivity in the household—women who have not entered
into useful occupations, voluntarily or gainfully, outside the houshold.
These are the women who have not made successful adjustment from
the old conditions of society to the new, and these are the ones more
than others who breed sources of frustration and provide material
for the doctors of sick souls.
... I have come face to face with that startling and enormous group
of women who are between the ages of 42 and that age, 69, at which it
is now determined that the average woman should die . . . women’s
life expectancy is now stated to be 69 and men’s 63. . . . Most of them
don’t know what to do with themselves. It has been one of my efforts
to see if it wouldn’t be possible to direct the energies of these women,
many of whom have executive capacities . . . the idle women who
might give their woman-power to their country in a thousand different
ways.
There is the married mother with grown children who in our
society is often in the anomalous position of wanting to be busy but
is bewildered by lack of opportunity, lack of strong incentive, or lack
of trained competence, or by all three together . . . her plight may be
characterized as among the most tragic of the groups in our national
community.
These problems have no national boundaries.

Problems of women in the economic, social, and legal fields are uni
versal. They know no national boundaries. Need, the lack of rights
and privileges, low standards of living and working—these conditions
affect the well-being of women wherever they exist.
While perhaps 30 percent of the American labor force consists of
women, there are many countries in which women are 40 and 50 per
cent of the labor force ... in this country the proportion of women
who work steadily through life is increasing, and I am afraid we
must expect that it will continue to increase during the next century.
So we must think of women as having to share in sustaining economic
security of the home as well as in the upbringing of the children and
in the citizenship responsibilities.
These and other problems have been acute for women workers in
Latin America for a long time, and will continue to be serious as those
countries expand their industrialization, which is just beginning in
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w

some of them. Women are working because, as in this country, their
earnings are needed for the livelihood of their families.
Today, we in America are a bulwark of hope and freedom in the
world, and as trade unionists and as women we have been in the
vanguard of enlightenment. We are demonstrating that democracy
as a way of life, imperfect though it may be, is the best medium through
which to achieve the fullest development of the individual.

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WOMEN AS WORKERS
Women’s place in the industrial economy has increased greatly in
importance.

The most basic single fact before, this meeting is that today about
17,000,000 women are either working or seeking work, and they are,
in exact figures, 28 percent of the entire labor force. ... At the peak
of their wartime employment, in July 1944, they numbered almost
20Y2 million. . . . There have been shifts from the better-paying fac
tory jobs into the less well-paying service trades. . . . However, very
few women today who want to' work are without jobs.
This figure of 17,000,000 women in the labor force has a many-sided
significance. In size alone, it is 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. . . . when
Harriet Martineau came to this country in 1836 . . . she found [she
said] women employed in only seven occupations, and those were
mainly humble ones.
. . . there are over 8 times as many women workers today as there
were 80 years ago . . . another striking change [is] that while the
entire labor force has somewhat more than doubled since 1900, the
women in it have tripled . . .
W omen’s occupational opportunities have expanded.

Along with these changes have come widening occupational oppor
tunities for women. It is true, of course, that even today there are
occupations and professions where it is still a handicap to be a
woman. . . . But we have come a long way from the days of Harriet
Martineau and her seven occupations. The Census of 1940 tells us
that women were employed in all but 9 of the 451 occupational classi
fications then used. ... it is still true that three-fourths of the em
ployed women are concentrated in only 23 occupations . . .
Employed women closely touch the daily living of millions of Amer
icans in other ways. Women account for 93 percent of all household
employees and for two-thirds of those who wait on the public in
restaurants and hotels. They also are about 95 percent of all telephone
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operators and 40 percent of all persons engaged in light manufacturing
work. Even in the so-called masculine realm of heavy industry,
they constitute 13 percent of all production workers and help to turn
out such products as machinery, transportation equipment, auto
mobiles, and furniture. They are the great majority of office workers
and of clerks in our great retail industry. It would be a sorry day,
indeed, for the men if women should suddenly decide not to work any
more in paid employment.—The Secretary of Labor.
In the professions, women’s representation still is minor.

As for the woman lawyer, the woman scientist, or the woman busi
ness executive, these are still the exception in the present world of
women’s work. Less than 5,000 women are employed in each of the
more “glamorous” occupations such as airplane stewardess, actress,
radio commentator, photographer. Even after one hundred years of
“emancipation” women represent less than 5 percent of any such highgrade professional groups as doctors, dentists, engineers, chemists,
architects, lawyers, certified public accountants.
The present trend is toward the prewar pattern.

Present indications . . . point to an approximate return to the pre
war pattern, with gains over the prewar period notably in clerical
and in manufacturing occupations.
. . . during the war, women had been, as they always wTere in wartime,
kicked upstairs. They maintained positions, found jobs, discovered
new talents for themselves, and earned salaries which they had not
dreamed of earning before. When the war was over, there was a united
effort to put them back where tiiey came from. Only this time the
effort to send them back seemed to me, while not a conspiracy, to be
directed in a clever way.
Now those attacks on women were serious because they were directed,
not only against women who worked for wages, but against the young
married woman, the housewife, and finally that large group of women
over 40 years old who number about 25 million today.
During the war women were able to consolidate their position, but
now there are evidences of attempts to undermine their status.
Women’s need to work was a major subject of discussion.

. . . even in 1948 there are still widespread fallacious attitudes about
working women. One of these is that women are an unstable labor

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supply, to be used only during a national emergency and to be dis
carded when the emergency is over. Another is that most married
women’s husbands provide them with economic security and that they
work merely for pin money. This latter attitude completely over
looks the hard reality that women work of absolute necessity because
a great percentage of them are heads of families, or must supplement
the meager earnings of their husbands. Furthermore, there is that
other large group of women who are single and are their own sole
support.
. . . women’s efforts for better working conditions benefit men as well.
The difficulties women encounter in the labor field are that there is
some opinion prevailing that they are an unstable labor supply, but
the fact that they now constitute a large part of our labor force is
a refutation of this contention and a favorable factor in helping women
to maintain and improve their position.
It would seem almost unnecessary to dwell upon women’s need to
work, but I do not wish to pass over this need lightly because there
are still too many wffio quarrel with the idea of women on the job, and
who keep saying, “Why don’t the women go home?” Why they don’t
is clear from every recent study of why women work. They work for
the same reasons men do—because they must.
Interviews . . . have disclosed that 92 percent of employed women
who lived with their families contributed regularly toward family
expenses, and well over half of them turned over 50 to 100 percent of
their earnings to the family purse. The New York State survey . . .
revealed that . . . practically without exception, women living with
their families regularly contributed'to the family’s support; almost
three-fourths of them contributed half or more of their pay.
A 1939 survey of Cleveland’s women workers showed that in over
half the families it was the earnings of women members that accounted
for 50 percent or more of the total contributions received by the family
from all its earners. A comparable survey in Utah disclosed that in
three-fifths of the families, women’s contributions made up half or
more of the family’s receipts from earners.
Single women need to work to support themselves and, many of
them, dependents.

Single women who are supporting or helping to support a parent
or parents, siblings, or the children of siblings, are the victims of a
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break-down in the system defining rights to, or responsibilities for,
support. In our culture, support of children is the parents’ responsi
bility. If they cannot or do not meet it, various policies are proposed
or in operation to deal with the situation, none of which involves pass
ing the responsibility to older children or other relatives. Another
avowed goal of social policy is economically independent old age and,
in lieu of that, public assistance. The care of the ill and the aged is
recognized as a problem we have scarcely begun to attack. Until we
do so successfully, and until we attain our goals with respect to the
economic situation of those too young and those too old to earn, the
burden will fall upon those bound to them by ties of blood and
affection.
If the fathers of these single women workers could only see that
instead of their daughters “helping out at home,” they, the fathers,
actually are subsidizing, not their daughters, but the establishments
where their daughters work, some changes might be made!
Widowed, divorced, and separated women need to work to support
their children.*

It is impossible to say exactly how many widowed, divorced, or
separated women earners have children, probably at least a fourth,
or how many of the mothers support or care for their children single
handed. -Since most of the mothers are under 40, and in that agegroup divorced and separated women outnumber the widowed 4 to 1,
one might assume that the children are partially supported by the
fathers. But since circumstances lessen both the willingness and abil
ity of the latter to make contributions, this assumption seems less
tenable in the majority of cases.
It is not the intent of our society that widowed or divorced mothers
be the sole support of their dependent children. . . . The “good”
father insures against the risk of death before his children are of
earning age, but none is provided against the risk of separation or
divorce which may have equally adverse effects upon the children
and their mother. Margaret Mead alleges that our arrangements for
providing children with status, security, and support are weak and
defective as compared with those in other types of social organization.
Married women are pushed or pulled into the labor market.

. . . married women are pulled or pushed into the labor market. The
“pull” is the opportunity for employment at attractive wages under
♦Conference discussion on the double burden of home and a job will be found under
the section on Women as Homemakers, pp. 152.

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good working conditions. . . . The “push” is economic necessity, earn
ings from other sources insufficient to meet the family’s needs. The
“pull” need not be so great if there are no children, the housework bur
den is light, and the husband’s earnings moderate. The “push” must
be great if there are young children or other heavy family responsi
bilities.
There are also married women with jobs whose situation is not one
with which we can be satisfied. They are the ones who in spite of
family responsibilities are forced by economic necessity to take any
job they can get. Over a fifth of the earning wives had children under
10 in 1940 and almost two-fifths, children under 18. Their families
may be better off by virtue of their earnings but we could draw up
an indictment of the state of affairs on many counts: the disadvantaged
position of the woman herself in the labor market, the loss to the
family of needed services, the efforts that most must put forth to
carry the job and their family responsibilities as well.
Particular disadvantages of women in the labor market were
discussed.

The theory that women do not need to work.
With 15 million people unemployed, married women should not
work, was the idea current [in the 1930’s].
. . . wTe have no needs test for men as workers, and that is what ques
tioning the right of married women or of girls living at home to work
amounts to. All of us are well aware that many men work who inher
ited money or whose fathers make enough money so that they could
support those men, could even support the families of young men. But
our society doesn’t think of saying to a young man when he applies for
a job, even in a depression, “Well, now, can your father support you?
Do you really need this job?” It is expected that a man should have
a job. And I think, as we do not apply a needs test to men for jobs,
that we should not apply a needs test to women. And certainly, we
should not assume that just because women are married they have no
need to work. Nobody when talking about married women working
has proposed to find out how many dependents the man and wife are
supporting. We haven’t talked about a needs test for jobs, anyway.
We think in terms of : “Can this worker do the job?”
The claim that women take away men’s jobs.
And as for those people who have complained about the competition
of women workers in the labor market, I think it would be well for
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them to realize that women are not going out and taking away jobs
that were formerly men’s or that really belonged to someone else, but
that they are merely following into the public place of work the job
which formerly was performed at home.
. . . we should educate men to the fact that we have not merely taken
over their jobs in industry hut have moved outside the home with our
own jobs—sewing, cooking, teaching, designing. . .
The young girl in the family of 30 or 40 years ago, when she left
school, was a productive worker at home in that she helped with the
canning, she helped with the sewing, she helped with the baking, she
helped with the washing, she helped with all of those things that are
done in factories now. The girl had a job at home. The idea that the
girls stayed at home and were supported by their fathers and brothers
has, of course, been just one of those things that has no basis in reality.
ITomen’s general wage levels lower than men’s.
. . . the general wage levels of women are lower than those of men,
and . . . the predominantly woman-employing industries are the lowwage industries. . . . when women were first entering industry as a
new part of the labor force, they carried over into the factory house
hold skills that did not have a high money value. They were paid in
the factories at lower scales of wages than those usually paid to men.
This was the same type of wage exploitation that ordinarily occurs
with the entrance into industry of any new group, like migrant workers
or workers of different nationalities or races.
Which in turn brings up the whole question of the adequacy of
women’s earnings. Low-wage scales have persisted even to December
1947 when all wage earners in selected manufacturing industries
averaged $57.54 a week, unskilled men $49.79 a week, but women only
$41.39 per week.
After the war, . . . side by side there were wages offered for
women workers of 90 cents, and $1.20 an hour, and other local em
ployers were offering them 50 cents an hour. . . . That I think we
have to keep our eye on at all times.
The tendency to classify womerds work as unskilled.
. . . one of the effects of the shortage of women workers during the
war, and since, has been to change the attitudes about the classification
of certain jobs that women work on. Work in the shirt factories, for
example, was always considered unskilled until the last 3 or 4 years.

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Since that time it is not any longer considered unskilled. . . . The
effect of there not being a mass of women outside the doors looking for
those jobs has resulted in their being classified as what they have
always been—skilled jobs.
I think a little more of that kind of experience in American industry
may have some influence on the attitude toward all of the jobs which
women hold which are considered unskilled just because women hold
them. By definition they are unskilled because women do them. I
think that attitude has been changing.
I was very much interested in the statement the speaker made in
relation to the unskilled workers being classified as skilled workers,
primarily because it has been only in the past year that nurses have
been considered professional workers instead of semiprofessional
workers.
One of our goals should be to be accepted as individuals and to be
judged on the basis of our capabilities and contributions, not our sex,
marital status, or economic need.
Cooperation by Government, industry, and workers to devise condi
tions of employment which take into consideration the normal
functions of women was discussed as an alleviating measure.

For a long time we met with a very natural reaction of irritation
about women being absent, or women taking maternity leave, but only
irritation, not planning to meet the normal conditions of employment
of women. But as we have gone along during these years, the basic
fact that, in a woman-employing industry, a method of operation must
be devised which takes into consideration the normal functions of
women and which does not prove burdensome (or even catastrophic,
as when on section work, too many women on the same section leave
at the same time) has been more clearly recognized. So that now,
instead of an attitude of irritation and complaint about absenteeism
and so on, there is more understanding, and if management and work
ers, jointly with government, begin to study just how much labor
turn-over there is among working women and what the causes of ab
senteeism are, and they then work together at the job of solving the
problem, progress can be made.
Part-time work was proposed as a major social benefit.

One particular provision which collective bargaining might well
help to press upon the attention of managements is the granting to
women workers as an accepted practice of the right to part-time work.
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If it were planned that two women should each work on half time to
supply a full week’s work, that would enable many women better to
reconcile the claims of home and of job, of personal health and family
duties.
The social benefits of half-time work seem to me so considerable that
the adjustments required at the job would in the vast majority of
positions be worth whatever bother they might entail. Perhaps the
acceptance of no other single practice would be so helpful to so many
women.
The problems and needs of workers in several fields came, under
special consideration.

Household employees.
. . . you will find plenty of interest in household employment among
the women who have had to stay at home and among the women who
are working in kitchens.
I am sure I don’t need to remind you that this is one of the largest
occupations in which women are engaged. Still, in this country, al
though the number is geratly reduced, women should be interested
and are interested in it, because women are employers and women
are the bulk of the employees.
I am going to throw out the idea to the two sides of the panel,
asking the trade union women what plans there were in their organ
izations to help working women in this field and to ask the women
in the international field whether some foreign countries had not
progressed.
. . . domestic service ... is a problem, but as a trade unionist, I
can see only two ways by which to remedy the situation: (1) That
they organize into trade unions, and (2) through legislative standards.
We have to work for both of these measures in order to solve the
problems of the domestic group.
. . . we have already a cultural training center for domestic help and
a homemaking center at Atlanta, Ga. ... We have started in four
States and four cities cultural training centers for domestic help and
homemaking.
More can surely be done than has yet been undertaken to make pro
visions on a dignified and well-paid basis of trained women who on
either a whole- or part-time basis can qualify as family workers and
domestic assistants.
785372°—48-

-10

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Good domestic help on a full-time basis has been a byproduct of an
inequality which we are attempting to lessen. The household helpers
of the present day constitute, moreover, an important part of the
married women earners with whose reconciliation of job and home
responsibilities we are dealing.
Nurses.
■ . . nurses have some peculiar problems in their employment. How
ever, I think that we realize more and more that we do have many
more similarities with all other working women than we have pe
culiarities, and all of the discussion of the various sessions has empha
sized that to me.
Perhaps the greatest peculiarity we have is in the particular position
that we stand in in relation to the advances that women have made
in controlling the wages, and so forth, of employment. Aside from
the small proportion of nurses who are employed in industries en
gaged in interstate commerce, we have hardly any nurses to whom
the Labor Relations Act or any other collective bargaining legislation
applies.
Also, we would like to call the interest of the various groups to the
legislation of the various States regulating the hours of work for
women. To my knowledge, there is no State law that puts any limita
tion on the hours of work that a graduate nurse may work. Only this
last year in California a law that had been on the statute books since
1915 and did protect the student nurses, not by a workweek limit
but by an 8-hour day limit, was subjected to efforts to exempt the
student nurses—along with the workers in the perishable fruit in
dustry—from that protection. Fortunately, the Nurses’ Association
in combination with many other women’s groups and other groups
was able to eliminate that amendment.
I believe we would like very much for all women to be interested
in our efforts to secure better employment conditions for nurses. We
feel that we not only have an interest in the welfare of nurses, but
almost every group that is represented here today, I believe, has mat
ters of health among its objectives. The great health programs that
trade unions are sponsoring now are one of the most significant mat
ters in health care in this country; and we know that if our nurse
supply is threatened (and we feel that the employment conditions
have a great bearing on that supply), we are not going to be able to
help achieve those objectives.
We also'want your understanding in our attempts to do collective
bargaining under the many handicaps that wTe now have. We are in
terested in all this legislation; even though the limitations on work for
women in the various States do not specifically apply to us, they are
a great help in the background. We are all for them. We are con
134

vinced that that is not enough and written agreements are necessary,
even in the work called “nursing.” And so we hope that we. will have
your understanding, your suggestions and your criticism, and your
help.
I would like to strengthen just a moment what the last speaker has
said, or put some additional emphasis on it, because that is a problem
which I think most Americans don’t appreciate. We are so used to
seeing the rather high-paid nurse that we sometimes have great diffi
culty getting, because there are not enough of them, to come into our
homes, and we assume that that is the typical situation for the average
nurse in this country.
We don’t realize that by and large she is written out of all of the
legislation which is passed to protect women in State after State.
Nor do we realize, interestingly enough, that the same problem that
you have heard here for America, you could have heard at a similar
gathering in England or France or Europe or India, and I think prob
ably Latin America, although I don’t happen to have heard it ex
pressed there.
There is a shortage of nurses in the world. We haven’t enough of
them. We haven’t been giving enough attention to them, and to the
problem of lifting their standards of wages and hours, so that they
can be the kind of professional workers that enough women will become
in order to meet the rising need for health workers of this sort, with
developing health programs in country after country over the world.
That is something that we need to bear in mind.
Telephone operators.
I wonder if most of us here realize that there is an amendment to
that law, the Fair Labor Standards Act. . . which provides that
telephone operators in cities which have less than 500 telephone sta
tions are exempt from being paid the munificent sum of 40 cents an
hour. It is very interesting that this amendment to the Fair Labor
Standards Act does not cover any of the occupations which men nor
mally fill, but :s designed only to exempt the woman telephone opera
tor. . . . And this is a wonderful opportunity, I think, for the tele
phone workers to convince you people here that, since you represent
women, it is part of your job to see to it that the telephone operator
exemption is once and for all removed from that Fair Labor Standards
Act.
The need was emphasized for extending education and training for
women workers, hut also for all women; and for men on re
sponsibilities toward family life.

Now it is true, of course, that illiteracy is shared by little boys as
well as by little girls, but they have a strange habit sometimes of

135

educating little boys, pushing them forward, and tending to forget
the little girls.
Women are entitled to the widest opportunity for training in order
to make the most of themselves as employed persons and to discharge
their financial obligations to their dependents.
It is next important that women’s education as it extends more
generally on into the thirteenth and fourteenth year of schooling in
community colleges, stress personal and vocational guidance, and help
women students to some elementary vocational competence as part of
their general education. In the next 10 to 20 years we shall be offer
ing to nearly a half of our men and women 2 more years of free
public education. And this should supply a great chance to fit both
sexes for personal, vocational, and civic capabilities in ways as yet
unattempted.
We have made almost no provision to assist the woman whose skills
or knowledge are not adequate at the time she wishes to reenter the
labor market. The widowed, divorced, or married woman worker who
wishes to work or who must work because of economic necessity faces
this problem frequently. Time and effort must be given to helping
her maintain or relearn her skills and to finding adequate job
opportunities.
A major victory still to be won by and for women, however, is wider
training opportunity. Few women, for example, are in apprenticed
occupations, the way into skilled technical and mechanical employment.
Some of the larger concerns now are using aptitude testing. . . .
We haven’t enough experience yet ... to tell whether or not that is
going to be constructive. . . . As a matter of fact, most women are
found to have the ability to perform the machine jobs if they are
given the proper training.
There has been great hesitancy in furnishing training for women
workers. Women need the returns from the most skilled work they
can do.
I think our most difficult problem in the lower income groups is
that the women who are working every day in the factory are some
times left out because of lack of culture or their ability to take their
136

place in society. And that is another reason that I think aid to
education is absolutely necessary.
The public educational responsibilities still to be assumed in rela
tion to this problem are tremendous.
Of top priority here is the effort to teach boys and young men about
the nature and responsibilities of marriage, of family life, of father
hood, of women’s right to self-fulfillment as that is self-determined.
We still have far to go in a realization by men that the family is the
primary institution in which democratic principles have to be ac
knowledged and practiced; and the implications of that practice
need careful spelling out to both sexes.
Full employment is a major solution to women’s and minority group
problems. It should not, however, put us to sleep.

The real line of progress for women, of course, lies in jobs for every
body in our society. Women’s problems, as well as minority prob
lems, and all other related types of problems are less acute when we
have full employment and prosperity. Through improving condi
tions of work for women we work in that direction, and in working
in that direction lies the greatest possibility of improvement of work
ing conditions for all working women.
Requirements of a job . . . not merely whether it can be done by a
woman, determine whether a job is unskilled or skilled. Real progress
. . . means full employment and properly paid jobs for everyone in
our society who wants to work.
. . . full employment is, after all, a major solution of some of our
problems. Although that is true and we can readily, of course, under
stand the advantages of full employment to us as workers—they are
obvious—I am afraid that the present full employment situation may
be doing a good deal to put us to sleep about the kind of problems that
face thousands if not millions of workers in this country.

137

WOMEN IN UNIONS
A greater understanding of the labor movement by all women will
contribute to the improved status of women.

. . . during the next few years . . . greater understanding of the
labor movement . . . will contribute to an improved status for women.
The trade union movement so often gets misrepresented because strikes
are so much more dramatic than, say, a record of 30 years of peace.
I have never seen a headline saying that a union has had a contract
in this or that factory for 30 years, standards have steadily improved,
and there never has been a day’s work lost due to a strike. We don’t
have headlines about that. We only have headlines where collective
bargaining breaks down. And I think one of the things that can be
helpful to women is a greater understanding of the labor movement
by all women.
Progress of women in the union movement.

About 3 million women are now members of trade unions . . . not
many . . . are in top places in the unions. It is still to a high degree
a man’s world at the top. But many women, without . . . title or
. . . official recognition are a power behind the throne . . .
Unions are needed in many unorganized industries where women
are numerous.

Nor is the situation as to the use by women of their bargaining power
over terms of employment on some collective basis as advantageous
as it should be. ... And since the majority of women workers are
in clerical or domestic categories, they fall into occupations as yet rela
tively little organized by the unions.
That women are difficult to organise is a fallacy.

A third fallacy is that women are unorganizable, or difficult to or
ganize, and therefore contribute little to economic advancement. The
truth is all people are difficult to organize.
Through trade unions, women have obtained many gains of
immediate cash benefit.

One of the greatest gains outside the legislative field—one of the
greatest gains for women workers during recent years has been their
138

increasing membership in trade unions. Through trade unions women
have been able to increase llieir wages. They have been able in many
unions under many union contracts to secure paid holidays, paid
vacations; so that, instead of a holiday or a vacation being a burden
to women because they then do not know how to pay their room rent or
pay the grocery bill, they can actually get some rest on those holidays
and during the vacations.
The fact that large numbers of women are now in the labor force
to stay is recognized by provision for them in union contracts. For
instance, the provisions respecting equal pay for comparable work
are written into union agreements, which is all leading to the recog
nition of women as persons in the unions.
The trade union contracts have provided for rest periods, for mater
nity leave; many of them now provide for insurance which is payable
during sickness and for cash benefits for maternity. All of those
things have been helpful to working women. Those are the things
in the trade union contracts which are of immediate cash benefit, or
are benefits enabling a woman to get more rest and make her better
able to carry that terrific job of a combination of work at home and
work in the factory.
In our machinists’ agreement we have also gone a long way . . .
six paid holidays. Most of our contracts call for that, and it is very,
very essential that you get . that extra day. And I don’t think we
want to make the manufacturers poor or anything of that type. It
is just the idea that we think we are entitled to it, and with good
working and labor management relations, a company should offer it to
you without having to negotiate, but they don’t. You will have to fight
hard for these things and all of the things that we have gained through
the trade union movement in the last 13 years—gains not only for
men or for women, but for workers in general all over tbe United
States.
I am representing an industry whose wages years ago were lower
than the laundry workers, I am ashamed to admit. But by taking
one of our country’s mottoes, “United we stand, divided we fall,” we
have brought up our wages, although we are unskilled labor. Bight
now, some of our women in the cigarette industry are making as
high as $1.19 an hour, working a 40-hour week ....
I work in a factory. Women’s work in a tobacco factory is work
that men have actually refused to do. We women have united, worked
into an organization, went out and fought when we were laughed at
and when we were told that our places were in the home where we

139

could probably make better pies than cigarettes. But we have proven
that by a little bit of fight and a little bit of guts, we can accomplish
anything we make up our minds to do.
Women should participate in union management councils.

On the economic side the importance to working women of active
participation in some labor organization for collective bargaining
provisions is crucial. All labor unions should allow women equal
rights of membership and should encourage women members into the
councils of union management. Only so will her special problems
of security and sufficiency of income, of leaves for maternity and of
provisions for special care for young children, be given more con
structive attention.
There are a number of women on national executive boards of unions,
but not enough of them. Women are on wage negotiating com
mittees, but again not enough of them. More and more women are
holding local union offices, increasing numbers of women are doing
work for Federal legislation for national unions and are taking the
leadership on State legislation matters and appearing before State
legislatures. An increasing number of women hold the position of
shop steward, an important post in a union, but considering the num
ber of women organized, the proportion is still far too small.
Union participation develops capacity for leadership in the labor
movement and in community life.

I stress-this need for greater collective action also for important
subjective reasons. Training in the assumption of that individual
responsibility essential in a democracy is only obtainable by people
being explicitly thrust into posts of responsibility. Many more such
posts in the unions no less than directly in work relations can greatly
multiply the chances for women to learn that the price of personal
growth is responsible effort. The more women who can be induced
to take some kind of office fitted to their talents, the more women
will be matured for responsible leadership.
But I think one of the greatest contributions that the trade union
movement makes to women workers is the opportunity that it gives
women to exercise their capacities for leadership. . . . as . . . those
women participate in the organization, they find the scope of their
thinking expanding very broadly, not only with reference to the
daily work of their jobs, but into political fields, fields of civil rights,
to all of the things that citizens should be interested in. So I think
that through the union movement and through the increasing member
140

ship of women in unions, a great contribution to good citizenship in
this country has been made.
We are forging for ourselves an increasingly important place in
the trade union movement, which in turn makes us more aware of
our citizenship and community responsibilities. It is to the mutual
benefit of ourselves as individuals of the trade union movement and
of our Nation that we are constantly striving to strengthen this re
lationship.
Where the industrial woman is part of an organized trade-union
group, she is better able to assume the responsibilities of citizenship
and to contribute to her community because of the social and economic
benefits she receives through her union. Because of her shorter work
week, higher wages, and sense of personal worth and dignity, she
is released to take her rightful place as a citizen.
Women are not assertive enough. They must learn by doing in the
union.
An outstanding southern editor recently said that the trade union
movement could make a greater contribution toward the solution of
the racial problem in the South than could any other group in the
country. It is my firm conviction that the trade union movement
can make an equally great contribution, working with millions of
women in factories and in the service occupations, in helping them
to participate fully in the life of our times.
The present union movement has insufficiently concerned itself with
the broad sense of women’s stronger status in society. Once union
leaders can come to think not alone in terms of rewards for work
but also in terms of total personality unfolding as an objective, a rich
new area of significant advance will have been charted.
Trade unions alone are not enough; labor legislation is needed.

Several factors stand out in the last decade which have bearing on
legislative trends. One is the substantial increase in the organization
of women in trade unions. This, of course, has meant very real gains
both for the women in the unions and for the unorganized workers
whose standards and status are affected by the achievements of the
organized. The increased organization, however, has led to a public

141

impression in many quarters that there is no need for labor legislation,
because the unions can take care of working conditions themselves.
That this is a short-sighted and erroneous conclusion is obvious when
we realize that although several million women probably are in trade
unions, there are many kinds of work in which women are employed
that are completely unorganized.
A further effort which the unions should support aggressively, if
not take the direct lead in, is the equalizing throughout the States of
legislatively enforced protective labor standards with special emphasis
on laws requiring equal pay for equal work.

142

LEGISLATIVE AND OTHER STANDARDS
The importance of labor legislation for women was repeatedly em
phasized, both by speakers and by conference representatives
from the floor.

I prefer to speak of the minimum wage as a protective rather than
a restrictive piece of legislation. I think it is erroneous when we speak
of such legislation as restrictive. We may perhaps have a blind spot
on this issue but I am sure the blind spot can be whitened out by a
round table discussion.
But although it is fairly well established that the presence of single
women in the labor force “is accepted and approved” and that their
earnings should be “sufficient to maintain them at an acceptable level
without subsidy in any form from family or others,” the second thing
of importance is that many single women in particular make insuffi

143

cient wages to support themselves properly. If the fathers of these
single women workers could only see that instead of their daughters
“helping out at home,” they, the fathers, are subsidizing, not their
daughters, but the establishments where their daughters work, some
changes might be made.
The importance to women of having State minimum wage legislation
as well as Federal legislation was recognized.

In the second place, Federal labor legislation of the last decade is of
great significance. Outstanding among the enactments of the New
Deal period was the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, bringing mini
mum-wage protection to thousands of women for the first time. But
Federal action cannot cover all workers. State laws must be enacted
to establish minimum wages for the large body of women employed in
strictly intrastate occupations, such as retail and service trades, and
to conserve the shorter workday. But somehow, the public has gotten
the impression that Federal legislation has taken care of everything!.
A large employer recently stated the role which minimum wTage
should play in this period:
If we review what happened in the 15 years after the ending of the last war,
we note that once the pent-up war demands had been filled and competition
had become more intense, it was common practice to cut wages in order to pro
cure specific orders at narrowing margins. This was frequently offered to labor
as an alternative to idleness and finally wound up in a deflationary spiral which
brought the average wage in tiie country to such a low level that the entire
economy almost became stalled—want and misery were everywhere. No think
ing businessman would like to risk such a spiral as a prospect for the 1950
decade. The surest way to avoid a recurrence of such tragic happenings would
be a revision upward of minimum-wage levels to bear some reasonable rela
tionship to labor’s present-day living costs. Unbridled wage cutting is a prac
tice which should be forever removed from the arena of legitimate competitive
activities.

The basic purpose of minimum wage legislation in relation to collec
tive bargaining was discussed.

... I hope none of us makes the mistake of thinking that minimum
wage legislation can take the place of trade union agreements. It
was never so intended, I am sure. ... It was never intended to do
anything except prevent exploitation. It was not intended to create
a going wage. And don’t you let them shove up the minimum to a
going wage. You make the people unionize and get the going wage
themselves, but you use this very effective plank in the labor program
to keep exploitation wiped out.
144

Standards in maximum hour legislation should he raised. Women’s
need for Saturday off, a 5-day workweek, a shorter workday,
and more leisure for home and citizen responsibilities was
emphasized.

As we look at our situation today, viewed from the standpoint of
one hundred years ago, great progress has been made in reducing the
workday and week, in achieving what Florence Kelley used to call
“leisure by statute,” but it is not good enough. Only 24 States and
the District of Columbia have either an 8-hour day or a 44-48-hour
week, or both. The 9-hour day with a 50- or 54-hour week is the
limit in 10 States; the 10-hour day with a 54- to 60-hour week, in 7
States. One State allows a lOi/t-hour day, and one sets a weekly
limit only. In five States—Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, and
West Virginia—there are no limits, either daily or weekly. In other
words, in half of the States the 8-hour day has no legal basis.
Closely related to the weekly and daily hours is the day of rest.
Again about half of the States provide one day’s rest in seven, and
bait are without it. There is probably no more important standard
for the protection of health, both of men and women, than this.
The statutes affecting working conditions for women, such as lunch
periods, seating, protection from dangerous materials, are very
“spotty.” Over 20 States, for instance, have no requirement of a meal
period.
The harmful effects of night work were clearly recognized.

Working at night is not a virtue for anybody. It is not good for
women, but it is not good for men either. Working at night does not
contribute to a happy home life for men anymore than it does for
women. And as an ideal—not for the moment while we have great
shortages, but we are talking here about goals—as a goal, it would
seem to me that if we set our sights on an adequate productive
mechanism, so that no people—men or women—would have to work
at night except in those industries or occupations that must be carried
on at night, we would have a sounder social outlook.
And another point of particular interest is the night shift, and I
think we are in the type of profession in which little or nothing can
be done about the night work, but we are having a problem of getting
graduate nurses into the institutions primarily because the night work
is more or less of a disadvantage to their families and to their family
responsibilities. I don’t suppose there is much that this conference
can offer in suggestions, because it is a “must” as far as institutional
work is concerned.

145

Women's labor laws should be extended to additional occupations.

In all these laws many women are left out of coverage. Hospitals
and other institutions have resisted regulation successfully in many
States. Women in industrialized agriculture are practically without
any regulation. In the occupations close to agriculture, such as can
neries, fruit and vegetable packing sheds, and the like, unlimited
overtime is allowed in many States. Domestic service is a field which
is practically without standards. The regulation of hours and wages
for this group presents very special difficulties, hut there is certainly
no good reason why they should be excluded from the protection of
Social Security laws.
Perhaps the greatest peculiarity we [nurses] have is in the particular
position that we stand in in relation to the advances that women have
made in controlling the wages, and so forth, of employment. Aside
from the small proportion of nurses who are employed in industries
engaged in interstate commerce, we have hardly any nurses to whom
the Labor Relations Act or any other collective bargaining legislation
applies. Also, we would like to call the interest of the various groups
to the legislation of the various States regulating the hours of work
for women. To my knowledge, there is no State law that puts any
limitation on the hours of work that a graduate nurse may work. . . .
We also want your understanding in our attempts to do collective
bargaining under the many handicaps that we now have. We are
interested in all this legislation, even though the limitations on work
for women in the various States do not specifically apply to us, they
are a great help in the background. We are all for them. We are
convinced that that is not enough and written agreements are neces
sary, even in the work called nursing. And so we hope that we
will have your understanding, your suggestions and your criticism,
and your help.
The need for legislative standards to meet women’s special problems
was stressed.*

Nevertheless, there are certain problems that are specifically women’sproblems, and such a question as maternity protection is certainly the
outstanding one. Do you realize that there are 51 nations in this
world that have legislation today providing maternity leave, maternity
benefits, and security of employment during the period of leave?
Fifty-one nations outside of the United tSates. Not all of them have
the same standards. But some 25 have substantially the same pro•See also “Men and Women, Though Equal are not Identical,” etc., p. 171.

146

visions as those of the third international convention which was
adopted in Washington at the first meeting of the ILO in 1919.
As a public policy over and beyond possible provisions in union
contracts, there should be immediate consideration of a social program
of maternity subventions under proper safeguards. We have already
accepted the principle involved here so far as widows are concerned;
and the possible benefits of an extension of the idea needs fresh
evaluation.
. . . though the broad concept for men and women as good citizens
and good workers may be the same, men and women are not identical
and there will always be problems relating to women workers. Farseeing management and Government should appreciate these problems;
women should work at a community and Federal level to clear any
laws that interfere with equal status, and should extend—not ignore—
those laws which bring benefits to women and invariably to men as well.
Group action, especially at local levels, is essential to getting better
laws enacted. There is danger in complacency. Representa
tives urged that unions and national organisations take an
active stand in support of specific legislation and responsi
bility for carrying it through.

We are also participating actively in the strengthening of existing
labor laws and in the promotion of other social legislation on national
and local levels. Women’s auxiliaries of men’s unions have an in
creasing awareness of the importance of laws and of community
projects. Women in the labor movement did a more zealous job in
connection with price control during the war. Trade union women
served almost universally on price panels in their communities, and
auxiliaries and other groups got out thousands of effective releases
showing the value of price control to the consumer and the importance
of holding the line together. These women were a real factor in help
ing to make price control work, and they furnish an illustration of what
we can do if we organize our efforts.
I wish, also, that more effort would be made by State branches of
women’s organizations to see to it that legislative standards for women
workers are raised in their own States. There are some notable excep
tions but, by and large, there is little activity in State legislation now,
either to improve existing standards or to defend them when they are
under attack.

147

I recognize the preoccupation with legislation in the field of foreign
affairs on which women have worked hard and successfully, but in
considering our international obligations, let us not forget our share
of responsibility for implementing the programs for domestic stand
ards involved in our own membership in the United Nations.
I profoundly wish that more national women’s organizations would
take a position on such a basic measure as the Fair Labor Standards
Act, the amendment of which is now under consideration by the Con
gress. The philosophy of the whole minimum-wage idea is now under
bitter attack by certain organizations, which are taking advantage
of what they undoubtedly consider the postwar reactionary spirit, to
get rid of this legislation.
As the standards of living of the working population have im
proved, partly as a result of legislative measures, the philanthropic
and benevolent attitude toward working women has changed. This
is all to the good. At the same time there has developed considerable
indifference toward the problems which still exist, which are not as
dramatic and colorful as those which aroused sympathy some decades
ago.
The fundamental importance of good working conditions standards
and their effect on the happiness and well-being of all workers
was emphasized again and again.

In 1914, in the midst of the war, the International Labor Confer
ence held its meeting in Philadelphia, at which it adopted a set of
principles to guide the nations in the postwar period. In this socalled “Philadelphia Charter” there is this significant statement :
“The Conference recognizes the solemn obligation of the International
Labour Organisation to further among the nations of the world . . .
policies in regard to wages and earnings, hours, and other conditions
of work calculated to ensure a just share of the fruits of progress to
all.” What should the fruits of progress include for women workers?
A rising standard of living, leisure, safety at work, healthful condi
tions, widening opportunities, security. Certainly these are goals
which challenge all of us.
One of our responsibilities as a member of the United Nations is
to see that the standards and policies adopted by the International
Labor Organization become implemented throughout our country.
By recent amendment of the constitution of the ILO, the United
States will be obligated to work for compliance with ILO conventions
on the part of the states. The ILO conventions include such basic
148

standards as the 8-hour day, minimum wage, protection of youth
against hazardous occupations.
Actually, where hours are reduced and wages increased, the work
ing woman has more time to devote to her own self-development and
to her family. Her wages contribute toward a better education for
her children. She has more time to learn of cultural things, she has
time to join in with the women who have had greater economic and
social advantages. This development of the whole person should be
the ultimate goal of a rounded democracy.
. . . we as a Nation are strengthened or weakened in the measure that
workers succeed. In trade unionism we stress the principle that a
chain is no stronger than its weakest link. If working women and
men have no standards, the standards of the whole country are pulled
down. If workers cannot supply the simple decencies of life to their
families, the entire world suffers.
Equal pay legislation and effective action against all discrimination
is needed.

There was agreement on the importance of equal pay to women.
The great expansion of industry and the increased demands for
labor [in World War II], widened occupational opportunities for
many women; it brought out clearly the need for equal-pay legisla
tion. . . .
But wre still have a job to do in attaining equal pay for equal work;
this is a matter of simple justice.
Let us not be deluded that equal pay for equal work will come with
out a struggle. The principle will not automatically be applied.
In consideration of our national objective of high living standards
and full employment, I submit that we cannot afford to risk the threat
to general wage levels that unequal pay to women involves.
Our [U. N.] Commission [on the Status of Women] has decided that
of all the various economic problems, the problem of equal pay for
equal work is probably the most important.
Then there is the question of equal pay for equal work. The old,
old story is brought out; women do not need as much pay as men
785372°—48-

149

because they do not support the home. That, I say, is entirely falla
cious. Only those women go out to become laborers who have no
adequate wage earners at home. Why should women go out into
factories if their men were earning enough money to support a home ?
We took a census in one part of our country [India], in one town,
and we found that only two women out of a hundred women went
out as wage earners simply to add a little pocket money. The others,
98 percent, were all women who really needed the money for their
homes.
I operate presses from 25 tons up to 190 tons. . . . Our con
tract . . . specifies one thing: a wage rate. That is, equal pay for
equal work. The girl receives the same amount of pay as a man on
the job. If she is able to do the job, she receives the same compensa
tion for her work.
I also would like to comment . . . on . . . these manufacturers
claiming that it is not necessary to have the type of legislation where
you compensate a woman to equalize her with a man. It is necessary,
because it happens in all of the industries, wherever they can get away
with it; and especially where there isn’t a union agreement, they will
try to—and I have worked in this type of shop—they will try to give
you less pay, doing the same type of work as a man.
Just remember that never have they invented an aircraft which is
able to determine the sex of the pilot: when you approach a control
tower anywhere in any country, until you pick up your own receiver
and they recognize it’s a woman’s voice, they never know who is flying
that ship, regardless of the weight of the ship, the number of motors,
or the type of ship.
Some representatives described steps taken to attain equal-pay
legislation.
We have in Pennsylvania just been able to put on the statute books
what we call the uniform pay bill which is an equal pay bill. . . . We
started this work in Pennsylvania in 1944. ... We organized this
State, and then at that time we had 103 clubs all strategically placed,
but the State was divided into ten sections, each with a special chair
man. We contacted each other, and in those 2 years between 1945 and
1947 we built up a program, and it was all done in these sections. We
contacted educational, political, labor, and management groups.
This is really one of the idiosyncrasies. At the beginning of our
campaign we had quite some encouragement from management. When
the bill was presented, they seemed to have lost their voices. So we had
the privilege of going on without them.
150

Others discussed union action to achieve equal pay and to eliminate
other types of discrimination.
Just a few days ago we met with some of our regional representatives
who are about to go into contract negotiations. We of the Fair Prac
tices Department recommended . . . that they negotiate the “no dis
crimination” clause. . . - The clause ... is all-inclusive. In some
States we do not yet have a Fair Employment Practices law, and also
we do not have the provisions that will pi-ohibit management from dis
criminating against women workers. So, in the clause we ask that
there shall be no discrimination in hiring or promotion, regardless
of race, creed, color, sex, or marital status.
When we get to the point of the marital status, that is quite a job,
and it has been a job in the IJAW as well as in some other unions. And
the men said that when they came to that point of negotiating with
management, management would not go for that section, the sec
tion that iixcludes marital status. So right away I began my little
argument with one of the fellows, to say, “Why do you not want to
negotiate that clause? Why would you weaken down on the section
on marital status ?” He said, “Management will agree on all the other
points with the exception of marital status.” He said, “Would you
make an exception of the section on marital status of women?” I
said, “On one condition, that it be the marital status of men as well as
of women.”
So I think that at this point we should not pit the married women
against the single women or the colored against the white. So we
maintained in that committee meeting that in negotiating the clause
it would be much better not to negotiate the clause at all rather than
to have it stripped to pieces and torn out, one section after the other.
In my own office we find that the question of discrimination is pretty
sharp. . . . We find that many of these oppressed people are able to
•attain the education needed for a job which would allow them to be
an office worker, but when it comes to the time when they are going to
enter into an office, they are barred for one reason or another. . . . The
most important part of the fight against discrimination is the fight
against the discrimination with regard to the Negro people. . . . The
Fair Employment Practices Bill before Congress . . . would aid our
women workers considerably; ... all people regardless of race, color,
creed, or sex . . . should get paid exactly the same wage for the exact
work that they produce, and . . . they should have equal opportuni
ties for a job.

151

WOMEN AS HOMEMAKERS
The American woman as homemaker was a major theme of the
conference.

. . . workers, homemakers, citizens. I want to reverse that order.
1 want to say “homemakers, workers, citizens,” for if it were not for
the homemakers we would have neither the citizens nor the workers.—
The President of the United States.
We, as trained homemakers, feel that homemaking can be as chal
lenging a job as any other job. And we would like to see the situation
brought about where it would not be necessary to take the homemaker
out of the home unless she definitely wishes to go out of the home.
. . . The homemaker holds in her hands the weapons for shaping
the future destiny of this world, through character training, through
the purse strings, and through many other ways. ... I would like
to see us work toward an economic situation where it would not be
necessary to take so many homemakers out of the home unless they
desire to work outside of the home. I also would like to see the work
ing conditions such that there will be an opportunity for women to
work outside of the home, if they care to, without discrimination as to
opportunity or remuneration.
The changed character of the home came under consideration.

. . . the second kind of influence conditioning women’s social pattern
[is] . . . the changed character of the home as a place to function
in. . . .
The tie that binds the woman to the home as a creative moral force
over and above its living accommodations is thus, unfortunately, not
as strong and as challenging in a sustained way as it was for our'
forebears. Whether or not this is unfortunate would seem to me to
depend basically upon how women in the home deal with these changed
conditions. And it may well be that a strengthening of the home
as a social institution is one of the major corrective efforts to be
faced by men and women alike.
We are still struggling with the horse and buggy way of running
homes. With some strange old traditions we American women, who
are supposed to be so free of tradition, find foreign women ahead of
us. I was brought up on a ranch in Colorado. You know out there
152

you are considered to be rather queer as a woman if you don’t prefer
the actual household jobs above everything else. The men used to
have to plow to eat and we had to cook to eat. But the men don’t
have to plow to eat any more. I think we need to apply job analysis
to homemaking just as we do to all industries and be more intelligent
about reorganizing our homes and our homemaking in order to get
more freedom to do the other things. So we need a conference, an
other conference in which to pool the wisdom of the women of Amer
ica who in one way or another are trying to meet this problem, and
very badly too as the divorce courts show, to find out new ways of
building home life and family life and the new world ahead of us.
Speakers stressed the value of the multiple role of homemaker,
worker, citizen.

. . . home work is sometimes the equivalent of leisure-time activity to
the working woman, that is, an outlet for creativity, and . . . the
working woman may have better home conditions because she is forced
to manage better.
I am a homemaker, I am a mother. I have a little boy and I have a
girl, and my husband works, and I know that old saying about married
women working. I don’t work because I don’t have anything else to
do. I also get up in the morning, prepare my children’s breakfast,
dress them, carry them down to the nursery about three blocks away,
in which I am fortunate. And I am on the job at 7 o’clock. We have
a half hour for our lunch. We get through work at 3: 30, and then
there is shopping to do. That part is where your job and your home
making comes in. The citizen part, I would say, is our women’s part
in the Red Cross work, the community work, your educational pro
grams, all of those things. . . . One day I go to work in overalls and
a bandana around my head and flat heels, and 3 weeks ago my husband
and I chaperoned at a sorority dance for my daughter and he had on
a tuxedo and I had a formal.
Some felt that perhaps women ought only to be workers and others
only homemakers. ... It is of tremendous advantage to the entire
family when the mother is a worker and an active citizen. . . .
I think that my participation in the trade union movement has made
me a better mother, a better homemaker, and I expect in the next couple
of years to be a better grandmother.

153

There is a general feeling around that perhaps you can’t be as good
a homemaker if you do take on an outside job. From 25 years experi
ence (and I think this experience would be generally testified to by
other social workers) I want to say that some of the finest mothers
are the ones who successfully carry homemaking and a job. In other
words, it is not the hours a mother or a homemaker puts into the job;
it is the quality of what she gives. And I would like to say a word
again of endorsement of Dr. Tead’s paper because it is only as people
do have more than one interest that they can successfully compete on
either side of this fence. I don’t like the fence there at all. . . . The
richer a woman’s experience, the broader her interest, the better mother
she makes for her children, and as an old maid, may I say, the better
wife she should make for her husband.
1 he burden imposed by the dual role of worker and homemaker was
given special consideration.

A majority of working women recognize two major obligations
while men tend to recognize—for better or worse—only one.
. . . another value judgment that is a constant in our problem [is the
assumption] that people will live in small family groups in independent
households. . . . The most pervasive and fixed part of our pattern for
living is the independent household made up increasingly of the nu
clear family without other members related or unrelated. There is no
visible tendency for the household to fall below the minimum set by
the size of the nuclear family, and the way it desires to live continues
to be reflected in . . . separate dwellings equipped with sleeping, din
ing, cooking, and other facilities.
Light on the question of the burden of housework may be sought
through logical analysis. Unfortunately, many who have attempted
it have not seen the whole picture and have reached f aulty conclusions.
What they have seen is the decline in home manufacturing and proces
sing and in the number of children, the increase in labor- and time
saving devices. What they have not seen are the new duties added
by the very conditions they emphasize, the change in standards, the
increased time as well as money cost of new modes of living, the
decrease in the number to do the work, and the fact that the presence
of one child even for part of the day or for unforeseeable and occa
sional days may tie the mother almost as completely as if there were
ten there all the time. What has been happening in the home is in
part the counterpart of what has been happening in the economy as
a whole, the decline in the proportion of time given to agriculture
154

and manufacturing and the increase in that given to distribution and
service; less to producing the fundamental necessaries and more to
producing amenities and comforts.
And I shall maintain that almost all women who go to work, even
those few who can afford adequate paid assistance in their homes, find
that they experience at least some tensions and strains in the effort to
do for each claimant upon their time all that they would like to do.
There is a running apprehension that if the job is being well served,
there may be a slighting of husband, or children, or parents, or home
management, or of social relations, or even of one’s owTn limited health
and strength.
. . . the proportion [of women whose earnings permit them to hire
the skilled housework help needed] is likely to become smaller if we
attain some goals to which we are committed, viz., greater equality
of opportunity for education and employment.
. . . discussion of the married woman worker very properly took as
its starting point the question of the work load in the home. She
dismissed this question as irrelevant to women earning enough to hire
help. I must admit that my sympathy goes out to the women to
whom she referred as those “likely to be publicized as successfully
combining marriage, children, a home, and a career.” . . . However,
the solution of the problem of the home-work load is basic to the
success, happiness, and health of the woman worker today.
Last summer there was laid upon us [the International Labor Office]
by our Conference the responsibility for studying and working on
the problems of the woman with the double responsibility . . . the
woman who has a home, and who works 8 hours a day in addition to
caring for that home. She, and not the part-time worker, is the typical
working woman the world over, much as we wish it might be the
latter. Therefore we must attack on an international scale the very
problems you are dealing with here.
... it hardly seems possible from the standpoint of proper and hu
mane treatment of a human being that women should be attempt
ing—and I mean this seriously, although there is a lot of joking
about it—to run their homes, particularly when there are children,
and carry out their many domestic responsibilities, and to work at
the same time. ... I am positive that before long there will be
drastic changes made with respect to this problem.

155

Hours spent on household tasks were assessed.

We have no accurate measure of the change in the length of the
working day and week of homekeeping women in the last two or
three generations. If their working hours have not declined 30 to 40
percent, they have not fared as well as others. The few attempts to
gather factual data gave rather surprising results. Even in city
homes of the business and professional class an average workweek of
46 hours was recorded, not over-all time but the sum of periods of 15
minutes or longer. If the hours spent by other family members and
paid workers are added, the figure rises to the extraordinary total of
80 hours per week.
So many women are exhausted because with 8 hours in the factory
or other occupation and an hour for lunch and a couple of hours of
traveling time, there you have 11 hours a day. Before they have come
to the factory they have been up, cooked for the children, got them
dressed and off to school. Then, after work, they go home, get supper,
do some washing and mending, and only go to bed to get enough sleep
to be able to get up and do it again the next day.
The most telling figures I know with respect to the load that these
women must carry come from a Russian study made available by
Kingsbury and Fairchild. It is a study of the time budget of employed
men and women. Both the men and women were family heads and on
the job for the same period of time. On the average the women spent
almost 4 more hours per day in what was called “indispensable labor”
than did the men, 26 more hours per week.
To speak of the average length of the working week of all home
makers is to obscure the facts. The major fact, and the one that sets
the problem, is the variation among them at any one time and the
variation for each one at different periods of her life . . . differences
due to the place of residence with its concomitant smoke, soot, acces
sibility to markets, commercial and community services, and, of
greater importance, differences in the size of the house and its timeand labor-saving arrangements and equipment . . . differences due to
the number and age of the family members. It is this last variable,
inherent in the nature of the family itself, which poses the central
problem with respect to the effective utilization of the energies and
skills of women.
Suggestions for alleviating the household burden were made.

The greatest problem facing the women in the factories, the laun
dries, the stores—and I think this applies to secretaries and profes
156

sional women as well—the most difficult problem is the problem of
combining home and job. During the war more progress was made on
that, I think, than had been made in the previous years. A great
many things were tried out, experimented with. Some firms brought
laundry machines in and set aside space, hired somebody to take care
of them, and the women workers could bring their laundry in in the
morning, it was put through the machines, and when they got ready
to go home, they could take it home with them. Grocery stores were
opened up in factories and time allowed for women to do their
shopping. Arrangements were made with retail stores for sales
persons to come to the factory with samples at given hours, during rest
periods and at other times, so that women could buy staple household
articles, articles of clothing. All of those things may seem small
things, but all of them were a tremendous step in the right direction.
The one thing that women workers whom I have worked with most
in the last 10 years most strongly wanted was that Saturday off. That
meant so much to women because, if they had Saturday off from the
job, then they could do the laundry, they could scrub the floors, they
could do their housework, and could actually have a day of rest on
Sunday. But even with the Saturday off, the double burden ... is
so great a problem that some thinking during the coming years along
the lines of what industry, government, and organized labor together
can do to reduce that burden will, I think, be one of the most con
structive programs that can be carried on as far as working women
are concerned.
Publicly supported child care centers were called for as a major
step toward a solution.

There should be a great extension of public, all-day nursery schools
for children as young as 2% to 3 years of age.
It is rather unfortunate that with the close of war we no longer
considered it necessary, for example, to continue maintaining child
care centers. . . . Working mothers today are confronted with that
problem in addition to so many others of their problems on what to do
with their children. . . . One of the reasons why the hotel and
restaurant industry has been attractive to women is because it does
afford the opportunity of part-time work. ... It would be a little
easier if we would continue a school-lunch program so that they know
that their children are adequately fed while they are in school. ... It
certainly is a long-range goal to do something about the culture of a
nation where poems have never been written about the children com

157

ing home from school and being greeted by the daddy with a cookie
and a cookie jar in his hand. . . . And when the mother has to work,
whether it is for economic reasons or whether it is simply that she
realizes she will be a happier individual by giving herself an additional
stimulus that comes from working, we should at least make the day
easier by having an adequate child-care program for working mothers.
There is a group of mothers, of children from the age of 1 month to
3 years old, who should not be working because these children need
their mothers at home. They are the present prenursery children
that we are concerned about. ... We contact . . . more than 150
women each month, talking to the women who have to work because
their husbands’ salary is not sufficient under present prices to meet the
cost of living, and these women are going out to work and not making
adequate provision for their children.
When we go back, I hope that our groups will fight for not only
publicly supported nursery schools, but some provision for making
men’s salaries more adequate to meet the inflationary costs of living,
for we want to meet that and we can’t meet it too quickly. If women
have to work, everyone should lend a hand in making some provision
for the care of their children.

158

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[47^4»A«« MiHI

THE WOMAN CITIZEN
1848
First Woman’s Rights Convention
Seneca Falls, N. Y.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

“DECLARATION OF
SENTIMENTS”
Voting denied.
No share in law making.
No jury service.
Civil death through marriage:
Marriage stripped wife of prop
erty rights, including earnings.
Wife not responsible for crimes
committed in husband’s pres
ence ; he was held for them.
Wife subject to husband; he
could whip her and restrain her
personal freedom.
Divorce grounds decreed by man
as lawmaker. Favored himself.
Guardianship laws made by
man. Favored the father.
Woman’s property taxed with
out representation.
Profitable employments closed to
women generally.

U. S. CONSTITUTION, ARTICLE XIX, Adopted 1920: “The
right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on
account of sex.”

1848

161

5 MILLION WOMEN
5% MILLION MEN

‘GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR
JUST POWERS FROM THE
CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED”

THE PROGRESS
OF THE
NATION
DEPENDS
ON THE
VOTES
OF ITS PEOPLE

1948
WOMAN UNDER THE LAW
1. Franchise enjoyed.
2. Helps make laws.
3. Jury service in all but 13 States.
4. Keeps personal identity in most
respects.
5. Wife enjoys full rights of prop
erty. Earnings hers by law in
most States.
6. Wife generally responsible for
her own wrongdoing.
7. Wife a free person. Husband
cannot whip or restrain her law
fully.
8. Divorce grounds generally same
for husband or wife.
9. Guardianship laws generally rec
ognize mother and father.
10. Tax laws apply alike to men and
women.
11. Women have legal right to enter
professions, occupations, and
trades. Very few restraints.
1948

48% MILLION WOMEN
47 !4 MILLION MEN

WOMEN AS CITIZENS
Throughout the conference women’s responsibility as citizens was
reiterated and reemphasised.

Carrie Chapman Catt made a speech to the school children in which
she said, “We have spent 50 years getting freedom for women. You
must now decide what you are going to do with the freedom, and
that’s the toughest decision of all.”
You have inherited the great gains they fought for, and you are
going on with the building of “a system of morals of civic honor”
on which we have only made a beginning.—The Secretary of Labor.
As far as India’s ideology goes, we lay a great stress on responsibil
ities when we ask for rights of citizenship. We have always taken
that attitude from the beginning of our women’s movement. We do
not desire so much rights of place or even rights of politics, but wTe
place the right of service, service for our country, and taking up the
responsibilities for our country as the first thing to be done for all
nations.
Suffrage is the first key to freedom in a democratic society, in other
countries of the world and in the United States.

Then we [in India] consider what the spearhead should be, and
that spearhead is certainly political rights. It is only when you get
the right of franchise, when you get the right of electing the right
men and women to the right places that you really pull your weight
in any country.
We all recognize that the first key in a democratic society, of course,
is the vote. Woman suffrage is the key whereby we may unlock all
the other freedoms. . . .
There are still 22 countries in the world where women do not now
have that basic freedom. . . .
Woman must first be recognized as a deserving citizen of her coun
try, as an integral part of its government, before she can successfully
seek rights and concessions in other fields.
162

We have exactly the same battle [for suffrage for all men and
women] here [in the United States] that there is to be waged in all the
other countries. . . .
So I think we would do well to leave this conference, realizing
that there is much that has to be done economically for the people
of this country, not only the women. I also think it would be very
unfortunate not to have some mention made here, where it was pointed
out that the vote and the suffrage are the door that opens the path to
freedom, that the Mary McLeod Bethunes of Mississippi in this coun
try do not vote. I think it would be quite well for the women of this
conference, who are aware of the value of the vote, to lend their
efforts in the future to extend that privilege to all citizens of the
United States.
Education is essential to intelligent voting and participation in
Government.

. . . you can’t be an intelligent voting citizen in a democracy unless
you have at least a minimum of education, and there is an enormous
amount of illiteracy in the world. Now it is true, of course, that
illiteracy is shared by little boys as well as by little girls, but they have
a strange habit sometimes of educating little boys, pushing them for
ward, and tending to forget the little girls.
We should educate women for positions of office, and it is highly es
sential that we should, because a woman who achieves position without
the ability to hold it does hold back the cause of women. . . . We
should educate the ordinary woman voter in the techniques of our elec
toral system and in the techniques of the party government.
Women’s education, like men’s, should help to clarify the areas
of citizen obligation for the conduct locally of public housekeeping,
education, health, housing, recreation, and worship. The develop
ment of civic interest can give scope to many women for invaluable
part-time or volunteer community service. We have as a nation
hardly begun to tap the resources of women’s rightful contribution to
the conduct and oversight of the many public services that contribute
to domestic and social well-being.
As important as the vote is participation in Government.

They must hurry up [the 22 countries without woman suffrage] and
give women the vote. Then following that, and so closely related to

163

it that it is almost impossible to distinguish the two, is the use that you
make of the vote, the extent of your participation in government. I
think it is fine to be able to look around and decide on the right man to
vote for, but why not the right man or woman to vote for ?
So we are also concerned ... with the need of getting women to come
out of their apathy and to increase, greatly increase, their participation
in all aspects of government, both as citizens and also as members of
government, in all its various attributes.
I would . . . like ... to stress the importance of women getting
into their political parties, and I would like to remind you that Carrie
Chapman Catt herself in 1920 took as her slogan “Join the Party of
Your Choice”—not your father’s, not your brother’s, not your hus
band’s, but the party of your choice. . . . The participation of women
in parties increased markedly in the last few years and ... we expect
it to show marked increase again this year. . . . You ought to go back
and get into your precinct caucus or into the very smallest unit of your
party in your State, and that is what the League of Women Voters is
saying to our members as individuals: “Go and get into the parties!”
... in order to achieve this gigantic purpose, more women should get
into the legislatures. I certainly think that our Congress here on the
Hill furnishes quite a sight: Seven women, after 21 years of women’s
vote!
One of our problems in placing women in high positions . . . has
been that there have not been enough women elected to office. In con
nection with that I would like to suggest that one of the troubles is
that not enough women vote. They don’t exercise the suffrage. We
worry about the poll tax States, but only 50 percent of the people in
the other States vote.
. . . I am very proud to tell you that in India not only have we one
woman Minister, who is the Minister of Health (and she has by the
way, made out a very fine scheme for the protection and training of
nurses, where the nurses get adequate pensions and adequate care)
. . . but we also have a woman Governor, a woman Ambassador, and
we have many women representing their country all over the world,
and we are not denied any place of which we are worthy. I hope that
this will be an eye-opener to many nations in the world.

164

A man in politics with whom I was discussing the problem said,
“Don’t talk about that! Can you conceive of what would happen if
all the women’s clubs ever got together on one thing ? There wouldn’t
be a politician in Washington whose hat wouldn’t be blown off. ’
Women’s lack of knowledge about how to participate in govern
ment must he met by beginning in a small way, on the local
level, and progressing with training and experience.

. . . I thought the ladies were charming and intelligent; I thought
the work they were doing for charity, and so on, was admirable. But
finally I asked them how many women in Pelham were members of
the Board of Selectmen, and they said, “None.” For the first time
they showed violent interest, because a roar went up that shook the
windows. Then I asked them how many women in Pelham were on
the Board of Education. “One,” the answer came. It isn’t that they
don’t want to get on such Boards. They don’t know how to get on
them.
.
I want to toss an idea into all these organizations. I think that
somebody ought to get out a pamphlet which tells women how to do
things, how to get in at the beginning of things, what is the practical
way for a woman to get into the local politics. They simply don’t
know where to start, any more than the woman past the 42-year age
limit knows how to get a job.
I have had the privilege of serving for 7 years on our county board
of supervisors. . . . There were two of us women to be appointed.
. . . I do feel that women have a great privilege in working in their
cities and should know their local governments. We cannot all aspire
to be a State representative or a St ate senator or in our Congress, but
if we would start in our local governments, school boards, we could do
a great deal there.
The two of us women on the board have found that the board of
supervisors was made up of a great many farmers and it was a very
difficult thing to make those rural men appreciate that the city women
coming on the board could do a creditable job. But in no way did
we try to tell the men what to do, but we found that if we made the
ball and let the men play it, that usually worked out well . . . .
You can really think up the thing and get the men to do it.
I want to take up the particular suggestion . . . that women do
not know enough about getting into politics, and . . . that that was
one of the keys to a better position for women in the world. I have
785372°—48-

165

just returned from England where I have had the pleasure of meeting
a woman’s group known as The Women for Westminster. That
particular group is planning for women to nationally go into politics
and they have a very marvelously planned course which they suggest
women take before they go into politics, and after they have taken
that course that particular organization gets behind the women that
have taken the course and they make very sure that those particular
women are elected to the offices for which they are running.
. . . political alertness is one of our chief aims .... We have re
cently conducted a survey of women in elected and appointive office
to discover how they got there, and the majority of them got there
because their husbands had died. . . . We do not plan ahead for these
things. ... We all want to start at the top. ... So often we go
and say, “We want a woman on a board,” instead of sticking with a
qualified woman .... We must get away from this point of view
of thinking about “we women want.” We must start thinking and
working for what “we women want for the people of the whole
country and of the world.” Then we will really get somewhere.
As I see it, the key to participating in government is getting some
understanding of government machinery and how you work with
other people, who possibly differ with you, yet you have a goal to aim
at, and you have to get their cooperation. . . . The place to begin
is on the appointive boards of your own communities. That is where
the man first begins, that is where he gets his first experience, and
it is from that that he comes to public attention ....
We have sent women to our legislatures, they have served one term
and come home. They have been in 60 days, and the whole thing
was over before they knew what it was all about. The place to begin
is in the smaller places, and then we can go farther and have more
responsibilities. . . . The contribution we have to make is not just
for women ... it is for the good of society as a whole.
“To strengthen democracy at its roots” it is essential that all groups
understand each other, meet and discuss mutual problems, and
work together.

I just want to touch on the thought that... everyone in a democracy
counts. . . . Even though we may have differences of opinion, the
whole thing must be won or lost by all of us working together, Negro
and white, Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic.

166

I think the Women’s Bureau has done a splendid thing in bringing
together this group of persons who have been the leaders in women’s
organizations, volunteer organizations, and trade unions. And it
seems to me that this should be extended into the community more
than it has been. . . . And the leadership here ... is tremendous.
. . . The problem is one of lack of understanding of each other’s lan
guage, of the terms under which union development has extended,
the very real need for better standards of living for the great mass
of our people. You are the people who can tell your communities that
there should be more Understanding of these things. It seems to me
that is one of the gulfs which we must bridge, and this very meeting
is helping to do that.
But I would like to see more activity in the community. I am a
great crusader for group discussion, the group discussion which sits
people down around a table to really talk things out, where there is
a meeting of minds. And that is what we need more of, and if every
one of these leaders can take back to their communities the thought
that they ought to make an effort to sit down with labor union leaders,
the representatives of women’s groups in the labor movement, and the
representatives in the volunteer groups, so many of them made up of
homemakers, that they ought to sit down around a table and try to
understand each other’s problems and discuss their differences, and
there are places where they can come together. I think that is one
real problem for all of us.
I am very fortunately in charge of the women’s program in New
York State. I have a women’s council of 34 women—CIO, the AFL,
and various business and women’s groups. There are 2G million in
women’s groups in the country today and I wonder how many of them
really understand the women’s trade union point of view. How many
of the women’s trade unions, the clubs, understand the other’s point
of view. I would like to say each group ought to invite the other
group and talk to other groups. Then we will not have the troubles
we have today.
For 10 years I have served in the New York Legislature, and I know
they do not understand each other, and I am hoping very devoutly
that you will all go back home and ask the other groups to sit with
you in the future.
We haven’t quite broken down those organizational barriers. We
have got to get these small discussions going and they must be cross
sections. I hope more of the women who can devote themselves in
the middle years of adulthood to their families will be able to' retain
their union cards and be able to keep their connections with the unions.

167

I hope that more of our organizations can strive to go beyond their
membership and bring together on all possible occasions in all parts
of town women who do different things, because we haven’t got a
double job, as you were saying yesterday. It is a triple job: it is
work; it is home work, whether you work for dollars or not; it is
citizenship; and the third responsbility is just as important as the
other two. And the only way we can bring these three things together
is through small discussion groups.
Everything that we can do to promote the technique, to get a com
prehension of what the small discussion is, will strengthen our democ
racy at its very roots.
An informed and articulate public opinion is needed.

. . . the most effective way in which a program for fundamental free
doms can be achieved is through public opinion.
The trade unionists today have done an amazing educational job
for the Nation, and those of us assembled here belonging to other
organizations can go back with the conviction that other public-spirited
groups must join with the trade unions and carry on greater intensive
efforts to keep this country healthy and vital through an informed
and articulate citizenry.
Compelling pleas were made for organizing public opinion in sup
port of women the world over, primarily through cooperation
with the ILO and the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

I therefore would lodge a plea with you, not only that you recognize
that women elsewhere in the world have such problems, but that you
recognize that your responsibilities as citizens call upon you to remem
ber their problems and study them. . . .
If the ladies from 42 to 69 want to have a job, all they need do is
to organize public opinion in all the countries of the world in support of
the program of the Commission on the Status of Women, and I can
promise them that those 27 years of their lives will be happily and
busily engaged.
In any event we [the U. N. Commission on the Status of Women]
need the support of public opinion. We need to have you know what
we are doing, support what we are doing, tell us if we are wrong
because occasionally even we may be wrong, and go ahead in your
communities and put across these principles.
168

[The U. N. Commission on the Status of Women] would like, there
fore, to have as much support as possible from . . . women’s organiza
tions of the United States, because . . . we are great organizers. We
do know how to organize as the women of no other country in the
world do. . . . Let us put our backs to this job so that when the Com
mission goes out to Lebanon, it will be to meet with a real convocation
of the women of the world.
Not only do we want to have the Commission on the Status of Women
meet [in Lebanon], building our meeting around this matter of the
right to vote and the matter of equal pay, which together with the
nationality treaty, are going to he the three principal items on our
agenda; but over and above that, we want to have as many as possible
of the women’s organizations of the world . . . hold their . . . meet
ings at the same time that we meet, so that we may have a real meeting
of minds with the women of the world.
We [the U. N. Commission on the Status of Women] hope to create
new international law. There are many hardships that women suffer
from as the result of conflicts in laws between different countries,
particularly in the fields of nationality, domicile, marriage, and di
vorce. We hope to pick up the task of the Treaty of Montevideo . . .
and to make that type of treaty, and others that may flow from these
same matters, into world-wide international treaties. ... It is going
to be very useful in helping married women, who we all agree do
suffer in many countries of the world from very special disabilities
and who greatly need help on that account.

169

COOPERATION BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IS
REQUISITE TO THE SOLUTION OF SOCIAL AND
ECONOMIC PROBLEMS*
A number of the conferees said it is still a man’s world.

In short, I am prepared to admit that except in quite subordinate
and relatively uncreative posts, our economic order does not yet recog
nize women as fully enfranchised participants. Progress has of course
been made, but business and industry are in all the crucially determin
ing factors still a man’s world.
There is something to be said for that partnership. In the first
place, women own two-thirds of the wealth of the United States. . . .
Of course, they don’t get the power that goes with that wealth . . .
the real power of wealth is directed, of course, by men.
. . . men, broadly speaking, immersed in their own aggressive drives
for creativity and for ego-maximizing in a competitive society, do not
yet seem ready on as wide a scale as necessary to realize the deep roots
of the woman’s dilemma. Hence, they do not do what they might as
husbands and as citizens to help alleviate the contributing causes.
There are still vast accumulations of male pride, possessiveness, false
social standards, selfcenteredness and fearfulness of job competition,
which aggravate the over-all social picture that women confront. These
are part of the social pattern they encounter. There is no solution,
as affecting these negative masculine forces, which can come about
without frank collaboration and a truer equal fellowship between the
sexes both in the home and in the market place.
Men also have problems that require understanding and solution.

Most of us agree . . . that personal fulfillment in modern life is
somewhat more difficult for women than for men, and that one cogent
reason is the variety of the social patterns of women’s relation to
society. On the other hand ... he [a previous speaker] may have
given women somewhat too much sympathy here and man a bit too
much blame. Man has a problem too, for he still bears the brunt of
the responsibility for family support. His guilt feelings, when he
•Stressed by both men and women participants in the conference.

170

cannot measure up to this demand well enough, can surely match
women’s feeling of insecurity and confusion in our modern society.
Men may be blamed for failing to give women the appreciation they
need, but women should be blamed for failing to understand men’s
problems, too.
There are one or two fallacies which we must get out of our minds.
When we ask for equal rights we are not forgetting that some women
are not as strong as men, but we always forget that some men are not
as strong as women physically.
When we ask for maternity care, when we ask for food for our
babies, when we ask for anything special in the wTay of protection in
special work like work in mines, let us remember that it is as necessary
for us, for any nation, to have healthy men as it is to have healthy
women.
Men and women, though equal, are not identical. Women will al
ways have special problems which require protective measures.
The line of progress is to extend such measures to include
men.

I think that everyone will agree that differentiation is the outstand
ing characteristic of democracy. I feel that that same differentiation
of treatment with reference to the groups where real differences exist
is a constructive feature of democracy.
The fact that men and women are equals does not make them identi
cal. Being not identical, there will always be special problems relat
ing to women. By recognizing that fact and making gains as we
can through protective legislation, by clearing away all of those laws
which interfere with equal status for women, women can have a more
assured position and can be more assured of equality than they can
by ignoring the differences and seeking only a theoretical equality.
A man can’t support or feed children on a substandard wage any
better than a woman can. And I have talked with men in the garment
industry who have worked for as long as 7 years, and at the end of
the 7 years were earning only $3 a week. That, of course, was during
the depression, but it happened. It wasn’t only to women. More
women, of course, than men were working at those very low wages.
But the line of progress—and that line has been adopted by the
Federal Government in wage and hour legislation—seems to me to

171

lie, not along giving up any of the protective regulations that we have
put into effect which benefit women, but rather along extending those
regulations so that they benefit men as well as women.
Many spoke up against continued warring and for cooperation
between men and women.

. . . we shall make our greatest contribution in working through
general projects that involve both men and women. ... If we lose
the peace we shall lose all the gains.that we have gained as women;
and probably women’s organizations should stop spending one-third
of their convention time in adopting constitutions and bylaws and
get their teeth into the pi'oblems that are facing the country as far as
the various bills that are going to be passed in the Congress—the
Marshall Plan, Universal Military Training, and all the other things
that are going to affect the life of this country perhaps for the next
decade. . . . But let us also start looking ahead and see if we can’t
work as men and women, as American people, to a world as a whole,
rather than women against men, men against women.
I will ask you to look back, only go back 50 years. Look at the
woman on each side of you. Fifty years ago the woman on either
side of you would expect to die at the age of 45. And now, take
another look. You may now expect to reach 69. That gives the re
sults of the progress in chemical, physical, medical, and allied sciences.
This is a new field for women. We are your baby. We need
people. We have been working with men and for men in research in
hospitals, in doctors’ offices, for a long time. We do not have any law;
we don’t need any. Perhaps we owe to you women the fact that your
newest baby can work with men, hold their own with men, and have
no difficulty. We get along beautifully.
May I plead with you to remain feminine, my colleagues; that is
your greatest weapon—your womanliness. We are a group of women
working in a man’s field with male competition. We love it. And we
think that they love us.
Not 10 years ago the work that was done went out in the name of
men that we assisted.
There was a woman that got on her feet somewhere this morning
and said that “Women, can you not make the snowballs that the
men fire?” We have made snowballs, and they have fired them, and
they have come so hot and fast that the men say they can’t fire them
fast enough, and they say, “fire them yourselves.” . . . Your own
ability is the question and the answer to how far woman can go. Do
you have the ability ? If you have the ability, make the snowballs for
172

men to fire, make them so good that they ask you to fire them, and you
will be there in no time flat.
The battle is by no means over. In fact, women are losing it in
some ways and in many places day by day. Something must be done
about it, and it can only be done by an inspired and intelligent move
ment for the partnership of women with men in all the fields of
activity in America.
. . . the renewed efforts of women to improve their status must not
take the form of war against man but the form of cooperation between
men and women in solving these problems.
Are American women good citizens? They are not numerous in
public office. Are women irreligious because there aren’t more women
preachers? You don’t change a man-shaped culture overnight. It
might be better to work shoulder to shoulder with the men, with an
attitude of “I’d like to take my share of the responsibility for things
now for a while. Things are really pretty bad and perhaps it is
because I haven’t been carrying my weight.”
So I say, “Let’s have a new crusade, not to knock men off their
perch but to get a seat beside them.”

173

CHALLENGES TO THE CONFERENCE
The President, the Secretary of Labor, and the other speakers chal
lenged the conference not to take gains for granted; to look
forward, not back; to deal with unfinished tasks; and to work
together for the general welfare.

You are all bringing your talents and experience to serve a common
purpose—to carry out a program in which you could join together,
sinking minor differences because of your vital common objectives.
. . . You have still before you many unfinished tasks. . . . You have
been studying them and seeking remedies that will increase the dignity
and usefulness of women in our society. These things cannot be ac
complished all at once, or all by the same means. Some of them are
now before the Congress, like equal pay for equal work, and the end
ing of specific discriminations against women, such as limitations on
the right to serve on Federal juries. It is within your strength to
accomplish these things in which you believe, but only if you make
your goals known and persist in demanding action. And there is not
a single man in the Government who can resist you if you really want
to do something.—The President of the United States.
And you who are met here today have an opportunity. Don’t talk
too much about Seneca Falls and a hundred years ago. . . . The
problems today require that the women of America take leader
ship. . . . —The Secretary of Labor.
I . . . caution the conference against winding up on a very gay note
that all is well with women and the citizens of America. Our job is
for women everywhere, women throughout the rest of the world.
We sometimes take for granted the gains that women have made.
Our natural point of view that the world just automatically gets better
has been somewhat shaken by two World Wars, but none the less,
quite unconsciously we keep on thinking, believing, “Well, if we let
it alone it will just go along.; things will do all right by themselves.”
I think with reference to women’s role in society that what hap
pened in Germany and Italy should teach us a lesson. Women were
thrown backward in the fascist countries, as women’s place, women’s
status is always made inferior in periods of reaction.
174

. . . she reminded us not to take our hard-earned gains for granted and
warned of that terrible “guilt by consent” which leads to indifference
to important matters. . . .
Since we as women no longer have to feel an inferiority because we
have full political status (the right to vote and hold office), we must
use that status for the general welfare. There are still battles to be
fought, and we can lead the way.
)
,

It seems to me that the one note we can carry away from this con
ference is that it is possible for women of every walk of life to come
to an understanding and work together for a common purpose and a
common aim.
It has been my good fortune to have the experience to work with
women who were not in the trade union movement, who were not
trade unionists themselves, but because we have the opportunity to
sit around the table, we have learned from each other how we can
work together.
The composition of a minimum wage board as you know consists
of three groups of people: The public, labor, and industry. I want
to go on record as saying here today that in my opinion there is no
greater experience for any one of us than to sit down at the table to
discuss our problems and learn to give and take for the common good.
I would like to see you make of this meeting a place of declaration
of purposes....—The Secretary of Labor.
Facts are needed, and work on a Federal, State, and local level.

In the Department we have hoped that out of this meeting will
come some crystallization of ideas and some consensus which will help
you and your organizations and be of assistance to us.—The Under
secretary of Labor.
I think we will fail in our duty if we do not go back to our com
munities and in the smaller way emulate the excellent examples set
by the Women’s Bureau of the United States Department of Labor.
I think we can do it. I think we should do it. • Always having in
mind there is a job to be done—Federal, State, and local. By getting
together, by inviting each other to our own organizations in our
communities, I think we can do it and accomplish the thing we are
here for.
. . . far from taking gains for granted, ... if there is one thing that
we could bring home from this conference, it would be the need to

175

acquaint ourselves with the actual situation and to try to think through
what we ought to do about it and where our pressures can be most
effectively exerted. . ..
. . . the actual situation is not known with respect to wages, working
conditions, the problem of night work, or the very limited amount
of legislation that apparently actually exists. That, of course, is
where an organization like the Women’s Bureau provides an in
valuable service.
Now, I am not so naive as to think, I hope, that facts ever con
vinced a legislature, or for that matter ever convinced the public.
The more facts you have the more sleepy they get listening to you.
But the reiteration of a fact often helps quite a lot. So let’s remember
that and not give up on the facts just on the grounds that facts are
not persuasive.
k
We hope for the day when “women’s divisions” on the basis of sex
may disappear as unnecessary in all organizations. This, however,
is a goal. In the meantime, organized women’s units within organi
zations are indispensable for defining goals and working out methods
for attaining them.
I would like to see that around the country we also have women’s
bureaus and, while we are striving to make our women’s bureaus
stronger, perhaps a department (as was mentioned here on two occa
sions) with cabinet status. I think we who are interested in things
that go on at the grass-root levels should think in terms of strength
ening our State women’s bureaus.
The problems need to be attacked on a world-wide scale.

. . . women have won for themselves a position in the working world,
but not to the same degree in all countries and in all areas; . . . there
must be a better understanding among various women’s groups and
also among men and women; there must be a greater body of informa
tion as to how women can better participate in government and in the
political life of their countries; . . . there must be a larger body of
information on how these ends can be achieved; . . . there must be
better means for channeling such information; ... we must reorient
the approach to the solution of our problems by seeking cooperation
from the men rather than declaring war upon them. We are cautioned
not to end this conference on a gay note, but rather to strengthen
our determination to broaden and increase our efforts for the elimina
tion of our many still unsolved problems.
176

«
-*■

Therefore we must attack on an international scale the very prob
lems you are dealing with here. But may I say that I know of no
body of women in the world more able to attack those problems than
American women, if I may judge from this conference.
I sometimes wonder if our young women just growing up realize
the blood and sweat and tears that went into that battle; or if they
realize that, in large areas of the world, that battle is still being fought
by women no less determined than our own women , in the past cen
tury to gain full political status. . . . the problem now is to use it for
the general welfare.
Don’t take it too much for granted. Not too much progress has
been made. There are still battles ahead.—The Secretary of Labor.
If the direct action of the Inter-American Commission of Women
is not needed for aid to women of the United States, . . . they will
feel no less an obligation to help women in sister American Republics
to secure the same political freedom which they themselves enjoy . . .
they will recall that the economic advancement of women in the
United States has been greatest since the gaining of their political
independence in 1920.
For as we take responsibility, as the women of all countries take
more and more responsibility—for making contact with each other,
for recognizing our common problems, for taking an active part in
improving standards of life and standards of work and in insuring
the peace of the world (all these I think are interrelated)—it seems
to me that, moving into that greater responsibility, we will make an
essential contribution to the future of society.
Women have learned the arts of peace.
toward the achievement of peace.

They can be a great force

Then, of course, the larger undertaking for women is to make up
their minds that there shall he no more war. ... if women could de
cide who were the right men to vote for, determine somehow who
were the men who would lead us most definitely toward peace, then,
providing those women would join together, a mighty purpose would
be achieved.
I do want here just to express a very deep appreciation for this
significant conference of thinking, conscientious women who have
been gathered from all over America to think together how we may
in a day like this better prepare ourselves to meet the challenge that
is ours as women of America and of the world today, and to face

177

squarely the problems that are confronting us, that we may be able
to bring about the peace and the democracy and the fellowship that
wc must have if we are to have a warless world.
I want to thank the Bureau, and I am very happy to be able to
participate, and I am hoping that the 6y2 million brown American
women whom we are privileged to represent may just catch the gleam,
' get the rays that will go out from such a meeting as this and find out
ways day by day of more closely integrating into the problem of
service, real unselfish consecrated service of the womanhood of the
world.
. . . women cOuld be a tremendous force toward the achievement of
peace and in the abolition of war. . . .
Women have learned the arts of peace. They have discovered
ways of making peace exciting and full of challenge. They know,
better than men, that the war against poverty and fear and disease
and hunger is the war to which we can, as yet, see no end. Even in
the United States, where the standard of living is higher than any
where else in the world, much remains to be done.
It is your special responsibility to carry on this fight, to persuade
the men to support you in it, so that the United States can push on
toward the goal of a better life for all our people.
In this task I wish you all Godspeed.—The President of the United
States.

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179

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Lucretia Mott

Paulina W. Davis

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Matilda Joslyn Gage

180

INDIVIDUAL WOMEN WHO HAVE ADVANCED
THE WELFARE AND STATUS OF WOMEN
T IS impossible to list here all the many women who made sub
stantial contributions toward advancing the position of women.
The following are among those not now living who were so out
standing that their names scarcely could be omitted from a list of
women who furthered women’s progress in this country.

Grace Abbott 1878-1939

Social and settlement worker. Director of U. S. Children’s Bu
reau, 1921-34. U. S. Government delegate to International Labor
Conferences, 1933,1937. '
Abigail Smith Adams

1744-1818

Urged in 1776 that in the Continental Congress attention be paid
to women’s rights.
Jane Addams

1860-1935

Active in social service; head resident for many years, Hull House,
Chicago. Advocate and worker for woman suffrage and for inter
national peace.
Susan B. Anthony

1820-1906

American woman suffrage advocate. Organizer, National Woman
Suffrage Association, first national body in this field. Lecturer
and campaigner.
Sarah G. Bagley 1

Nineteenth century American labor leader. Active in forming
the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association in Massachusetts
in 1845. Editor and vigorous campaigner for reforms in Massa
chusetts textile mills and in labor conditions in general.
Clara Barton

1821—1912

Founder of American Red Cross, and its first president, 1882-1904.
Clerk in Patent Office, Washington, 1854—61, before women were
generally employed by the Government in Washington.
Dorothy Bellanca 1894-1946

Vice president and one of the founders of the Amalgamated Cloth
ing Workers of America. Her life work was betterment of work
ing and living conditions for wage earners.
1 Dates of birth and death not available.
785372°—48

-13

181

■

Susan B. Anthony

iillilli

■MW

Hill®

ppfjiii
Bill Bli
llllIIS

Clara Barton

182

Antoinette L. (Brown) Blackwell 1825-1921

First woman to complete a theological course (1850) and to be
ordained a minister in the United States.
Elizabeth Blackwell

1821-1910

First woman of modern times to receive a medical degree (1849).
Established the New York Infirmary for Women (chartered in
1854) and, a year later, the Woman’s Hospital.
Margaret Brent

1600-1670 or -71

America’s first feminist. Appointed by Provincial Court of
Maryland as attorney for Lord Baltimore’s estates. Requested
a “voyce” and vote in the Maryland Assembly and, being denied
this, protested all of its acts.
Carrie Chapman Catt

1859—1947

American woman suffrage leader and lecturer in a campaign re
sulting in adoption of Nineteenth amendment to United States
Constitution.
Lydia Maria (Francis) Child 1802-80

Author of an early history of women and later active in the aboli
tionist movement.
Hannah Lee Corbin1

Protested in 1778 against taxation of women in Virginia unless
they were allowed to vote.
Paulina Wright Davis

1813-76

Organized the first National Woman’s Rights Convention, at
Worcester, Mass., 1850.
Sarah Margaret Fuller 1810-50

Author, critic, and advocate of social reforms. On staff of New
York Tribune as literary critic, 1844-46.
Matilda Joslyn Gage 1826-98

Reformer and ardent advocate of women’s rights. Author of
many books on subject. Associated with Susan B. Anthony and
others in woman suffrage movement.
Helen Hamilton (Chenoweth) Gardener

d. 1925

Active in movement for women’s progress and for social reform.
Author. First woman member, U. S. Civil Service Commission
(1918), the highest Federal appointment given a woman up to
that time.
Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson

1591-1643

A pioneer in the establishment of the Rhode Island Colony, which
provided an opportunity for women to develop their own religious
thinking.
'
1 Dates of birth and death not available.

183

184

i m

Anna Howard Shaw

Mary McDowell

Jane Addams

^......I

Carrie Chapman Catt

Florence Kelley

M. Carey Thomas

185

* ■

Dr. Mary E. Woolley

Lillian Wald

186

Mrs Raymond Robins

Florence Kelley 1859-1932

American social-settlement worker, resident at Hull House and
Henry Street Settlement. First woman chief factory inspector
(Illinois, 1893).
Julia Clifford Lathrop

1858-1932

Social and settlement worker. Member, Illinois State Board of
Charities, 1893-1909. First woman appointed by the President
as chief of a Federal bureau, the U. S. Children’s Bureau (1918).
Mary Lyon 1797-1849

Organized trustees and promoters and raised funds to establish
a permanent endowed college for women on the same conditions
as for men and with fixed standards of work; opened it in 1837.
Mary McDowell 1854-1936

Leader in the establishment of the University of Chicago Settle
ment House (1894) ; was its first director and headed it for many
years. Initiator of first comprehensive survey of employment of
women and children in industry. Active in many organizations
and social reforms.
Lucretia Mott 1793-1880

Associated with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in calling first woman’s
rights convention at Seneca Falls, 1848. Active in antislavery
movement.
Ann Preston

1813-72

A pioneer medical woman. Established Woman’s Hospital of
Philadelphia (1861). Professor from 1853 on, and in 1866 the
first dean of Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. Active
in antislavery and temperance movements.
Mrs. Raymond Robins

1
i

1869-1945

Social economist. As president, convened the International Congress of Working Women in Vienna, 1923. Associated with many
organizations defending and promoting the interests of working
women.
Anna Howard Shaw, M. D.

1847-1919

Also licensed in Methodist ministry. Lecturer and advocate of
woman suffrage. Chairman of Woman’s Committee of Council
of National Defense, World War I.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1815-1902

American' woman suffrage leader. Organizer, convention for
woman’s rights at Seneca Falls. First president, National Woman
Suffrage Association.

187

Lucy Slone (Blackwell)

1818-93

Organizer of American Woman Suffrage Association. Made first
speech on woman’s rights in her brother’s church at Gardner, Mass.
Harriet (Beecher) Stowe

1811-96

Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of the most powerful anti
slavery influences.
Dr. M. Carey Thomas

1857-1935

Educator. President, Bryn Mawr College, 1894-1922. Founder
of first school on a college campus for workers in industry.
Lillian D. Wald 1867-1940

Social worker. Founder of Henry Street Settlement, New York.
Originator of idea of Federal Children’s Bureau. Member of
many organizations connected with public health and welfare,
national and international.
Angelina Grimlce Weld 1

She and her sister Sarah were active in the suffrage and abolition
movements. Daughters of a superior court judge in South Caro
lina, in 1828, as young women in their early twenties, they sold
their slaves and moved North. Angelina lectured widely and
Sarah published a book replying to the clergy’s arguments for
slavery and the subjection of women.
Phillis Wheatley 1753-84

Negro poetess. Brought from Africa as a child, she became a
member of a Boston family who responded to her extraordinary
intelligence by personally tutoring her and affording her oppor
tunity for travel. Her education was remarkable among women
of her time. Her place in the history of American literature,
though not a large one, is secure.
Emma C. (Hart) Willard 1787-1870

Pioneer in women’s education. Established in 1819 the first
school to which a State government contributed money, the first
girl’s school to teach higher mathematics. 'Wrote a book on cir
culation of the blood.
Dr. Mary E. Woolley 1863-1947

Educator. President, Mount Holyoke College, 1900-1937. Ac
tive in movements for world peace. Full delegate from the
United States to World Conference on Disarmament, 1932.
1 Dates of birth and death not available.

188

........................ .

iliilB

Dorothy Bellanca

Appendix I

CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE
Over 200 people attended the working sessions of the conference
(exclusive of speakers, Labor Department and other Federal agency
staff, and attendants who failed to register). They came from 25
States, the District of Columbia, and 2—delegates to the U. N. Com
mission on Status of Women-—from India and Syria. The President
of the Inter-American Commission of Women participated, and two
members of the International Labor Office—one of them from the
Washington and one from the Geneva, Switzerland office—attended,
and, on one day, the cultural attaches from four of the embassies.
The representative distribution of the delegates and conference
guests was in fact one of the significant things about the conference.
Apart from those already mentioned, they came as representatives
of national women’s organizations, civic and professional groups,
labor unions, administrators of women’s State labor laws, manage
ment and personnel groups, working members of the press and radio,
and as individuals specially concerned with the problems and achieve
ments of women who have cooperated in the work of the Women’s
Bureau.
The following is a list of the organizations invited:
Advertising Federation of America.
Altrusa International.
Amalgamated Clothing Wokers of America—CIO.
American Association of Industrial Nurses.
American Association of Social Workers.

191

American Association of University Women.
American Civil Liberties Union.
American Dental Hygienists’ Association.
American Dietetic Association.
American Federation of Labor.
American Federation of Soroptimist Clubs.
*American Federation of Teachers.
American Home Economics Association.
American Library Association.
American Management Association.
* American Medical Women’s Association.
*American Newspaper Women’s Club.
American Nurses’ Association.
American Occupational Therapy Association.
American Physiotherapy Association.
American Society of Medical Technologists.
American Vocational Association.
American Woman’s Society of Certified Public Accountants.
*Association of American Women Dentists.
Association of Bank Women.
Association of Women Broadcasters.
*Bakery and Confectionery Workers’ International Union of Amer
ica—AFL.
"Boot and Shoe Workers Union—AFL.
Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers,
Express and Station Employees—AFL.
Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems.
Committee on Women in World Affairs.
Communications Workers of America—Ind.
Congress of Industrial Organizations.
Congress of Women’s Auxiliaries—CIO.
’■"Council of Guidance and Personnel Associations.
'"Democratic National Committee—Women’s Division.
Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union of America—
CIO.
General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
Home Missions Council of North America.
Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ International Alliance and Bar
tenders’ International League of America—AFL.
International Association of Machinists—Ind.
International Association of Women Lawyers.
♦Did not send delegates.

j
.

International Brotherhood of Bookbinders—AFL.
^International Handbag, Luggage, Belt and Novelty Workers’
Union—AFL.
International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union—AFL.
Laundry Workers International Union—AFL.
League of Women Voters of the United States.
National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses.
National Association of Deans of Women.
National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s
Clubs.
National Association for Practical Nurse Education.
National Association of Women Lawyers.
^National Congress of Parents and Teachers.
National Consumers League.
National Council of Catholic Women.
National Council of Jewish Women.
National Council of Negro Women.
^National Council of Women of the United States.
National Education Association.
National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs.
National Federation of Women’s Republican Clubs.
*National Home Demonstration Council.
National League of Nursing Education.
.National Nursing Council.
National Organization for Public Health Nursing.
^National Service Star Legion.
National Vocational Guidance Association.
National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
National Women’s Trade Union League of America.
* Office Employes International Union—AFL.
*Pilot Club International.
Presbyterian Board of Christian Education.
Quota Club International.
Republican National Committee,
* Retail Clerks’ International Association—AFL.
* Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union—CIO.
Textile Workers Union of America—CIO.
Tobacco Workers’ International Union—AFL.
United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers of
America—CIO.
United Council of Church Women.
♦Did not send delegates.

■

193

United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers’ International Union—
AFL.
United Office and Professional Workers of America—CIO.
^United Packing House Workers of America—CIO.
"‘United Pocketbook, Leather Goods and Novelty Workers of Amer
ica—Ind.
"‘United Shoe Workers of America—CIO.
United Textile Workers of America—AFL.
Upholsterers’ International Union of North America—AFL.
Woman’s National Democratic Club.
^Women’s National Press Club.
Young Women’s Christian Association of the United States, National
Board.
Zonta International.
♦Did not send delegates.

Appendix II

1. PROPORTION OF ALL WORKERS WHO ARE WOMEN, 1870-1950
PERCENTO

1950
1945

5I0___________________ 15

_____

20____ _____ 25

(estimated for

march)

(CIVILIAN LABOR
FORCE FOR MARCH)

1940
1930
1920
1910
1900
1890
1880
1870

SOURCES: U S. CENSUS; BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTJCS

195

(
2. NUMBER OF WOMEN WORKERS AND ALL WORKERS, 1870-1950
MILLIONS

MILLIONS

TOTAL-

1940

5DUKES. V V CENSUS, BUREAU OF

196

3. OCCUPATIONS OF EMPLOYED WOMEN, APRIL 1940, 1945, AND 1947, AND OCTOBER 1947
IN MILLIONS
-i 5-0

NUMBERS OF WOMEN

785372° — 48------ 14

IN MILLIONS
5.0 -

APRIL 1940 I

APRIL 1945
APRIL

Y///X

1947

OCTOBER 1947

CLERICAL WORKERS

OPERATIVES, CRAFTSMEN. FOREMEN,
AND LABORERS (EXCEPT FARM)

DOMESTIC SERVICE WORKERS

PROFESSIONAL AND
SEMIPROFESSIONAL WORKERS

- 2.5
2.5 -

2.0

- I .5

SERVICE WORKERS (EXCEPT DOMESTIC,)

SALES WORKERS

PROPRIETORS, MANAGERS, AND
OFFICIALS (EXCEPT FARM)

FARMERS AND FARM WORKERS

1.0

• 0

SOURCES' U. S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS AND
U. 5. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

I
198

4. OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN—OCTOBER 1947
MILLIONS OF WOMEN
Clerical and kindred workers

4,526,000

Operatives and kindred workers

3,404,000

Service workers (except domestic)

1,917,000

Professional and semiprofessional workers

Domestic service workers

Farm laborers and foremen

Saleswomen

Proprietors, managers, and officials (except farm)

Farmers and farm managers

Craftsmen, foremen, and kindred workers

Laborers (except farm)

1,594,000
1,485,000
1,389,000
1,376,000
689,000
296,000
188,000
81,000
Total Women Employed: 16,944,000.
Source: U. S. Bureau of the Census.

5. WOMEN IN PRINCIPAL SCIENTIFIC FIELDS, 1946-47
THOUSANDS OF WOMEN

Chemistry

Mathematic

Bacteriology

Engineering

Zoological science

General biology

Botanical science

Geology

Architecture

Geography

Astronomy

Meteorology
Bases on estimates from

6. WOMEN IN MEDICAL AND OTHER HEALTH OCCUPATIONS, 1947
THOUSANDS OF WOMEN
Professional and student nurses

Practical nurses and hospital attendants

Medical laboratory technicians

’178,000

24,225

Physicians' assistants

X-ray technicians
Dentists' assistants

Physicians

Dental hygienists

Physical therapists

Medical record librarians

Pharmacists

Occupational therapists
Chiropractors
Dentists
Osteopaths

Optometrists

Veterinarians

Bases on estimates from various sources.
11946 estimate.

* 1940 census.

199

Appendix III

SUMMARY OF STATE LABOR LAWS FOR WOMEN,
•
JAN. 1, 1948
(Basic standards, exclusive of temporary wartime modifications)

1. DAILY AND WEEKLY HOURS
Forty-three States and the District of Columbia have laws limiting
the daily and weekly hours of employment in one or more industries.
Five States Alabama, Elorida, Indiana, Iowa, and West Virginia—
do not have such laws.
One-half of the States (24) and the District of Columbia have set
8 hours a day and/or 48 hours a week or less as the maximum time
a woman may be employed in one or more industries.1 In 23 of
the 24 States (Kansas is the exception), manufacturing establish
ments are covered by such standards. South Carolina’s statute,
however, covers only one branch of manufacturing—textile mills.
In Connecticut the maximum workweek is 48 hours for several in
dustries but daily hours may not exceed 8 in mercantile establish
ments nor 9 in manufacturing plants. The 8-48 hours law in Kan
sas applies to public-housekeeping occupations and telephone ex
changes; in manufacturing establishments, the maximum is 9 hours
a day, 49% hours a week.
Arizona
8-48
California
8-48
Colorado
8
Connecticut
8-48
District of Columbia_________
Illinois
8-48
Kansas
8-48
Louisiana
8-48
Massachusetts
9-48
Montana
8
Nevada
8-48
New Hampshire 10-48
New Mexico
8-48

New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio

■
.

9-48
8^8 Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
.
South Carolina
(men
women)
Utah
Virginia
Washington
Wyoming „

8-48
9-48
8*4-48
9-45

and

10-48
9 48
8-40

8-48

1 For States with different legal maximum-hour standards tor different industries, the law
establishing the lowest maximum hours was selected for this summary.

200

Ten States have set a maximum 9-hour day for women, and the weekly
maximum in all but one of these (Idaho) is 50 or 54 hours. Arkansas
lias no weekly hours specified in its statute, but it has a 6-day week
provision, which in effect makes a 54-hour maximum week.
Arkansas..:----------------------- 9- 6 days
Idaho
9
Maine
9__54
Michigan
9_54
Missouri:____________________
9.54

Nebraska
9-54
Oklahoma
9-^54
Texas-----------------------------------Vermont
9_50
Wisconsin
9_5o

9_54

Eight States have set a maximum day of 10 hours and a week of from
54 to 60 hours. In 2 of these—Georgia and South Carolina—the
law applies to one type of manufacturing plants only, cotton and
woolen mills.
Delaware.10-55
New Jersey10-54
Georgia (men and women)10-60
South Carolina (men and
Kentucky-------------------------------10-60
women)------------------------------- IO-55
Maryland--------- ^10-60
South Dakota10-54
Mississippi (men and women)— 10-60

I11 one State—Tennessee—the maximum is 10y2 hours a day, 57 hours a
week. This applies to manufacturing and other industries.
Minnesota has fixed no daily limit in its statute, having only a 54hour weekly limitation for manufacturing establishments and
several other industries.
2. DAY OF REST2
About half the States (23) and the District of Columbia prohibit em
ployment of women for more than 6 days a week in some or all indus
tries. In 2 of these States—Colorado and Utah—the law does not
apply to manufacturing establishments.
Arizona.
Arkansas.
California (men and
women).
Colorado.
Connecticut (men and
women).
District of Columbia.
Delaware.
Illinois (men and
women).

Kansas.
Massachusetts (men and
women).
Louisiana.
Nevada.
New Hampshire (men
and women).
New Jersey.
New York (men and
women).
North Carolina.

North Dakota.
Ohio.
Oregon.
Pennsylvania.
South Carolina.
Utah.
Washington.
Wisconsin (men and
women).

3. MEAL PERIODS
Well over half the States (27) and the District of Columbia have pro
vided that meal periods varying from % to 1 hour must be allowed to
women in some or all industries. This provision applies to manu
facturing establishments in all but 4 of these States—Colorado, Il
linois, North Carolina, and Washington. The States are as follows:
Arkansas.
California.
Colorado.
District of Columbia.

Delaware.
Kansas.
Illinois.
Kentucky.
Indiana (men and Louisiana.
women).
Maine.

2Rhode Island in its 1945 reenactment of an earlier law covering employment on certain
holidays includes Sunday in the list of days when employment not absolutely necessary is
prohibited. The law, however, does not establish a 6-day week.

201

New Mexico.
Maryland.
New York (men and wom
Massachusetts.
en).
Nebraska (men and wom
North Carolina.
en).
North Dakota.
Nevada.
New Jersey (men and Ohio.
Oregon.
women).

Pennsylvania.
Rhode Island.
Utah.
Washington.
West Virginia,
Wisconsin.

4. REST PERIODS
Rest periods of 10 minutes after a work period of 4 consecutive hours
or during each half day are provided for in the laws of California,
Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah.
1

5. NIGHT WORK
Twenty-two States and the District of Columbia place some limitation
on the hours of employment of women or persons between 18 and
21 at night.
.
The following 13 States prohibit night work for adult women in certain
industries or occupations. In Washington only elevator operators
are covered.
Massachusetts.
Nebraska.
New Jersey.
New York.
North Dakota.

California.
Connecticut.
Delaware.
Indiana.
Kansas.

South Carolina.
Washington.
Wisconsin.

In three additional States—Arizona, Kentucky, Rhode Island—a night
work prohibition applies only to persons under 21 years of age in
messenger service. In one other—Virginia—and the District of
Columbia, similar limitations apply only to girl messengers.
In five additional States—Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico,
Pennsylvania, and Utah—the laws do not prohibit the employment
of adult women at night but regulate such employment either by
limiting the number of hours that may be worked at night or by
setting specific working-conditions standards which must be com
plied with.
6. SEATING
Forty-six States and the District of Columbia have seating laws—
all but one of them applying exclusively to women. Florida’s law
applies to both males and females.
Illinois and Mississippi have no seating laws.
7. OCCUPATIONAL LIMITATION LAWS
[Note.—Asterisk preceding entry indicates that law applies only to persons under 21
years of age.]

AlabamaLabor in or about a coal mine.
Arizona,_________________ Work in or about a mine, quarry, or coal breaker.
ArkansasNot to be permitted to enter any mine to work therein.
California May not mix alcoholic beverages containing dis
tilled spirits on premises used for the sale of
alcoholic beverages, unless she is the licensee or
wife of any such licensee.
^Employment of person under 21 on portion of prem
ises used for sale and service of alcoholic beverages
for consumption on premises.

202

♦

Colorado-------------------------- Employment In or about a coal mine or coke oven
except in a clerical capacity.
‘Persons under 21 may not sell or dispense spirituous
liquor.
Connecticut----------------------Employment in any tavern, unless employee is the
wife or daughter of proprietor.
Delaware-------------------------Employment of person under 21 in room where in
toxicating liquors are sold or dispensed, unless
the establishment sells for medical or scientific
purposes.
Florida.----------------------------‘Employment of person under 21 in pool room, bil
liard room, or place where intoxicating liquors
are manufactured or sold. Exemptions: Profes
sional entertainers ; drug or grocery stores licensed
to sell beer and wine for consumption on premises;
hotel workers if work is apart from place where
alcoholic beverages are sold.
Illinois---------------------------- Manual labor, in or about a mine.
Municipal authorities are empowered to prohibit
by ordinance employment of women (other than
a licensee or wife of licensee) as dispensers in
retail liquor establishments.
Indiana--------------------------- Employment within a coal mine.
‘Employment of person under 21 in any public pool
or billiard room.
Kentucky------------------------- Employment by retail liquor licensee for duties other
.
than as waitress, cashier, or usher.
Louisiana-------------------------Employment as dispenser or seller of spirituous
liquors, wines or malt in any concert hall or saloon
where such liquors are sold.
Maryland-------------------------Employment, other than office work, in connection
with any mine.
‘Employment of person under 21 in or in connection
with any place where intoxicating liquors are
sold.
Massachusetts------------------ ‘Employment of person under 21 in, about, or in
connection with a saloon or barroom where alco
holic liquors are sold.
Minnesota----------------------- - ‘Employment of girl under 21 as messenger for tele
graph or messenger company.
Missouri-------------------------- Employment within any mine.
Montana-------------------------- ‘Employment of person under 21 to serve liquor,
beer, or wine.
New Mexico--------------------- ‘Employment of girl under 21 as messenger for tele
graph, telephone, or messenger company.
New Jersey----------------------Employment in the manufacture of nitro and amido
compounds. Exemptions: Office, works hospital,
or welfare room or building.
New York------------------------ Employment in or in connection with a mine or *
quarry.
‘Employment of females under 21 as conductors or
guards on any type of railroad.
‘Employment of females under 21 as messenger for
telegraph or messenger company.
- Employment as bellhop, crossing watchman, express
driver, taxi driver,® jitney driver, meter reader
(gas or electric), metal molder or section hand, or
in the following occupations or places:
Baggage handling.
Barroom and saloons or public drinking places
which cater to male customers only and in
which substitutes for intoxicating liquors are
sold.
3 The prohibition of taxicab driving was declared unconstitutional by a county court of
Ohio in 1928, but the prohibition has remained continuously on the statute books and was
repeated in the 1947 amendment to the law.

203

Blast furnaces; mines; quarries; or smelters.
(Except in offices.)
Bowling alleys.
Delivery service.
Freight handling.
Operating freight or baggage elevators.
Pool rooms.
Shoe-shining parlors.
‘Employment of girls under 21 in the personal
delivery of messages.
Oklahoma Employment underground in the operation of a
mine, or in any quarry. Office work exempted
if on top of fhe ground. '
Pennsylvania Employment in or about a mine (except in office or
clerical work).
South Carolina___ _______ ‘Employment of person under 21 in a retail, wholesale, or manufacturing liquor business.
UtahEmployment in a mine or smelter.
VirginiaEmployment in or around a mine or quarry.
Washington___ __________ Employment in or about a mine (except in clerical
or messenger duty about the surface workings).
Employment as a bellhop.
WisconsinEmployment in or about a mine or quarry.
Employment in place established by court order as
a disorderly house or employed to work for any
person convicted as keeper of a disorderly house.
‘Employment of girl under 21 as bellhop in hotel.
‘Employment of girl under 21 as caddy on golf
course.
Wyoming Employment in or about a coal or iron mine or in any
other dangerous place (except in office or clerical
work).
Ohio

WEIGHT-LIFTING LAWS

Nine. States have some regulation regarding the lifting or carrying
of heavy weights by women. These States are:
California.
Massachusetts.
Michigan.

Minnesota.
New York.
Ohio.

Oregon.
Utah.
Washington.

9. EQUAL-PAY LAWS
Nine States have enacted statutes which' prohibit discrimination in
rate of pay because of sex. Two of these laws—Illinois and Mich
igan—apply to manufacture only.
Illinois.
Massachusetts.
Michigan.

Montana.
New Hampshire.
New York.

Pennsylvania.
Rhode Island.
Washington.

10. MINIMUM-WAGE LAWS
Twenty-six States and District of Columbia have minimum-wage laws
on their statute books. These laws are broad in their coverage of
industries, most of them being all-inclusive with a few listed exemp
tions, usually domestic service and agriculture. The Maine law is
the only one of limited scope; it applies to one industry only—fish
packing. Most of these laws, apply to women and minors; the ex
ceptions are noted in the following list:

204

,
»

Arizona.
Arkansas (women and
girls).
California.
■
Colorado.
Connecticut (all persons).
District of Columbia.
Illinois.
Kansas.
Kentucky.
Louisiana (women and
girls).

Maine.
Massachusetts (all per
sons).
Minnesota.
Nevada
(women
and
girls).
New Hampshire.
New Jersey.
New York (all persons).
North Dakota.
Ohio.
Oklahoma (women).

Oregon.
Pennsylvania.
Rhode Island (all per
sons).
South Dakota (women
and girls).
Utah.
Washington.
Wisconsin.

11. INDUSTRIAL HOME-WORK LAWS

Twenty States and the District of Columbia have industrial home
work laws or regulations. „ In all but three—Colorado, Oregon, and
Utah—and the District of Columbia the law applies to “persons”;
in these four jurisdictions the law applies to women and minors only.
The States are:
California.
Colorado.
Connecticut.
District of Columbia.
Illinois.
Indiana.
Maryland.

Massachusetts.
Michigan.
Missouri.
New Jersey.
New York.
Ohio.
Oregon.

Pennsylvania.
Rhode Island.
Tennessee.
Texas.
Utah.
West Virginia.
Wisconsin.

12. EMPLOYMENT BEFORE AND AFTER CHILDBIRTH

Six States have laws prohibiting the employment of women immedi
ately before and after childbirth. These States and the periods
during which women may not be required to work are:
Connecticut-----------------------------------Massachusetts-------------------------------Missouri---------------------------------------New York-------------------------------------Vermont---------------------------------------Washington------------------------------------

4 -weeks before and 4 weeks after.
4 weeks before and 4 weeks after.
3 weeks before and 3 weeks after.
4 weeks after.
2 weeks before and 4 weeks after.
4 months before and 6 weeks after.

•

205

206

Appendix IV
7. MARRIED WOMEN IN POPULATION AND IN LABOR FORCE, 1910-47
0

1947
Women in population 14 years and over

54.806.000

Married women:

In population

35.212.000

In labor force

7,545,000

MILLIONS OF WOMEN
30

1940
Women in population 14 years and over

50.550.000

Married women: In population

30.090.000

In labor force

5,040,000

1930
Women in population 14 years and over

44,013,048

Married women;

In population

26,170,756

In .labor force

3.071,302

1920
Women in population 1 4 years and over

36,190,483

Married women

In population

21,318,933

In labor force

1,920,281

1910
Women in population 14 years and over

30,959,473

Married women;

In population

17,684,687

In labor force

1,890.661

Source-

U. S- C<

8. MARITAL STATUS OF WOMEN IN THE LABOR FORCE, 1910-47
MARRIED WOMEN

SINGLE WOMEN

WIDOWED AND DIVORCED WOMEN

16,323,000

13,840,000

10,679,048

28.8

5,429,707

7,788,826
Source:

U. S. Census (14 years and over)

207

CURRENT PUBLICATIONS OF THE WOMEN’S BUREAU
FACTS ON WOMEN WORKERS—issued monthly. 4 pages. (Latest statistics on
employment of women; earnings; labor laws affecting women; news items of
interest to women workers; women in the international scene.)
EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK AND TRAINING FOR WOMEN
The Outlook for Women in Occupations in the Medical and Other Health Services,
Bull. 203:
1. Physical Therapists. 14 pp. 1945. 100.
2.- Occupational Therapists. 15 pp. 1945. 100.
3. Professional Nurses. 66 pp. 1946. 150.
4. Medical Laboratory Technicians. 10 pp. 1945. 100.
5. Practical Nurses and Hospital Attendants. 20 pp. 1945. 100.
6. Medical Record Librarians. 9 pp. 1945. 1 Op.
7. Women Physicians. 28 pp. 1945. 100.
S. X-Ray Technicians. 14 pp. 1945. 100.
9. Women Dentists. 21 pp. 1945. 100.
'
10. Dental Hygienists. 17 pp. 1945. 100.
11. Physicians’ and Dentists’ Assistants. 15 pp. 1945. 100.
12. Trends and Their Effect upon the Demand for Women Workers. 55 pp.
1946. 150.
Tiie Outlook for Women in Science. Bull. 223:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Science.
Chemistry. (In press.)
Biological Sciences. (In press.)
Mathematics and Statistics. 21 pp. 1948. 100.
Architecture and Engineering. (In press.)
Physics and Astronomy 32 pp. 1948. 150.
Geology, Geography, anc! Meteorology. (In press.)
Occupations Related to Science. (In press.)

Your Job Future After College. Leaflet. 1947.
Training for Jobs—for Women and Girls. [Under public funds available for
vocational training purposes.] Leaflet 1. 1947.
EARNINGS
Earnings of Women in Selected Manufacturing Industries, 1946.
14 pp. 1948. 100.

Bull. 219.

EMPLOYMENT
Employment of Women in the Early Postwar Period, with Background of Pre
war and War Data. Bull. 211. 14 pp. 1946. 100.
Women’s Occupations Through Seven Decades. Bull. 218. (In press.)
Women Workers After VJ-Day in One Community—Bridgeport, Conn. Bull.
216. 37 pp. 1947. 150.

CURRENT WOMEN’S BUREAU PUBLICATIONS
INDUSTRY
Women Workers in Power Laundries. Bull. 215. 71 pp. 1947. 200.
The Woman Telephone Worker [1944], Bull. 207. 28 pp. 1946. 100.
Typical Women’s Jobs in the Telephone Industry [1944], Bull. 207-A.
1947. 150.
Women in Radio. Bull. 222. 30 pp. 1948. 150.

52 pp.

LABOR LAWS
Summary of State Labor Laws for Women.

7 pp.

1947.

Mimeo.

MINIMUM WAGE
State Minimum-Wage Laws and Orders, 1942: An Analysis. Bull. 191. 52 pp.
1942. 200. (Supplements through 1947. Mimeo.>
State Minimum-Wage Laws. Leaflet 1. 1948.
Map showing States having minimum-wage laws. (Desk size; wall size.)
EQUAL PAY
Equal Pay for Women. Leaflet 2. 1947. (Rev. 1948.)
Chart analyzing State equal-pay laws and Model Bill. Mimeo. Also complete
texts of State laws (separates). Mimeo.
Selected References on Equal Pay for Women. 9 pp. 1947. Mimeo.
HOURS OF WORK AND OTHER LABOR LAWS
State Labor Laws for Women, with Wartime Modifications, Dec. 15, 1944.
Bull. 202. (Supplements through 1947. Mimeo.)
I. Analysis of Hour Laws. 110 pp. 1945. 150.
II. Analysis of Plant Facilities Laws. 43 pp. 1945. 100.
III. Analysis of Regulatory Laws, Prohibitory Laws, Maternity Laws.
12 pp. 1945. 50.
IV. Analysis of Industrial Home-Work Laws. 26 pp. 1945. 100.
V. Explanation and Appraisal. 66 pp. 1946. 150.
Map of United States showing State hour laws. (Desk size; wall size.)
LEGAL STATUS OF WOMEN
International Documents on the Status of Women. Bull. 217. 116 pp. 1947. 250.
Legal Status of Women in the United States of America.
United States Summary, January 1938. Bull. 157. 89 pp. 1941. 150.
Cumulative Supplement 1938-45. Bull. 157-A. 31 pp. 1946. 100.
Pamphlet for each State and District of Columbia (separates). 50 ea.
Women’s Eligibility for Jury Duty. Leaflet. 1947.
WOMEN IN LATIN AMERICA
Women Workers in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Bull. 195. 15 pp. 1942. 50.
Women Workers in Brazil. Bull. 206. 42 pp. 1946. 100.
Women Workers in Paraguay. Bull. 210. 16 pp. 1946. 100.
Women Workers in Peru. Bull. 213. 41 pp. 1947. 100.
Social and Labor Problems of Peru and Uruguay. 1944. Mimeo.
Women in Latin America; Legal Rights and Restrictions. (In press.)

CURRENT WOMEN’S BUREAU PUBLICATIONS
RECOMMENDED STANDARDS for women’s working conditions, safety and
health :
Standards of Employment for Women. Leaflet 1, 1946. 50 ea. or $2 per 100.
When You Hire Women. Sp. Bull. 14. 16 pp. 1944. 100.
The Industrial Nurse and the Woman Worker. Sp. Bull. 19. 47 pp. 1944.
100.

Women’s Effective War Work Requires Good Posture. Sp. Bull. 10. 6 pp.
1943. 50.
Washing and Toilet Facilities for Women in Industry. Sp. Bull. 4. 11 pp.
1942. 50.
Lifting and Carrying Weights by Women in Industry. Sp. Bull. 2. Rev.
1942. 12 pp. 50.
■
Safety Clothing for Women in Industry. Sp. Bull. 3. 11 pp. 1941. 100.
Supplements: Safety Caps: Safety Shoes. 4 pp. ea. 1944. 50 ea.
Night Work: Bibliography. 39 pp. 1946. Multilith.
WOMEN UNDER UNION CONTRACTS
Maternity-Benefits under Union-Contract Health Insurance Plans.
19 pp. 1947. 100.

Bull. 214.

HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYMENT
Old-Age Insurance for Household Employees. Bull. 220. 20 pp. 1947. 100.
Community Household Employment Programs. Bull. 221. 70 pp. 1948. 200.
REPORTS OF WOMEN IN WARTIME: 10 reports on women’s employment in war
time industries; community services; part-time employment; equal pay; rec
reation and housing for women war workers.
Changes in Women’s Employment During the War. Sp. Bull. 20. 29 pp. 1944.
100.

Women’s Wartime Hours of Work—The Effect, on Their Factory Performance
and Home Life. Bull. 208. 187 pp. 1947. 350.
Women Workers in Ten War Production Areas and Their Postwar Employment
Plans. Bull. 209. 56 pp. 1946. 150.
Negro Women War Workers.! Bull. 205. 23 pp. 1945. 100.
Employment Opportunities in Characteristic Industrial Occupations of Women.
Bull. 201. 50 pp. 1944. 100.
Employment and Housing Problems of Migratory Workers in New York and
New Jersey Canning Industries, 1943. Bull. 198. 35 pp. 100.
Industrial Injuries to Women [1945]. Bull. 212. 20 pp. 1947. 100.
REPORTS ON WOMEN WORKERS IN PREWAR YEARS: Women at work (a
century of industrial change) ; women’s economic status as compared to men’s;
women workers in their family environment (Cleveland, and Utah) ; women’s
employment in certain industries (clothing, canneries, laundries, ofiBces, govern
ment service) ; State-wide survey of women’s employment in various States;
economic status of university women.
THE WOMEN’S BUREAU—Its Purpose and Functions.

Leaflet.

1946.

Women’s Bureau Conference, 1948. Bull. 224. (Instant publication.)
Write the Women’s Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor, Washington 25, D. C., for
complete list of publications available for distribution.

Full text of Report on 1948 Women's Bureau Conference: The American Woman, Her Changing Role: Worker, Homemaker, Citizen : Women's Bureau Bulletin, No. 224

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