Women and Work

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Women and Work
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Transformation in womens economic roles

• More women working after 1870
• Between 1870-1910 the number triples
• By 1900, women are 17 of the industrial
  workforce by 1910, 20 of wage earners are women
• Types of jobs change
• No longer just domestic service
• New jobs in service sector and industry

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Characteristic of industrial female workforce in
the late 19th century

• Young, single, urban
• Likely to be the daughter of immigrants
• Likely to view labor as short-term
• Contributed to a family economy
• Different levels of autonomy within the family
• Italians v. Jews
• Concentrated especially in garment industry
• Obstacles to collective consciousness
• Sense that labor was temporary
• Workforce divided along ethnic lines
• Dispersed in a multitude of small shops

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Women and Labor Unions

• Male hostility to working women
• Undercut male wages
• Associated women with de-skilling of labor
• Undermined ideal of family wage
• Women barred from most labor unions
• Unions as male social clubs

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Black women

• Higher labor force participation rates
• By end of Reconstruction, half of all women over
  16 worked for wages
• More married women
• 25 of black and 3 of white married women worked
  (1900)
• Sexual and racial segregation
• Barred from nearly all industrial jobs
• Severe obstacles to collective protest

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Womens Trade Union League

• Goal of bringing women in the labor movement
• Characterized by cross-class alliances
• Workers and middle-class allies
• Gradually widened its focus
• Campaigned for womens suffrage
• Protective labor legislation
• Difficulty of synthesizing feminism and unionism

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Leaders of WTUL, ca. 1907
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Shirtwaist
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Triangle Shirtwaist FireMarch 25, 1911

• Background
• 1909 Uprising of 20,000
• Clara Lemlich
• Worst industrial disaster in US history
• 146 young women died

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Rose Schneiderman
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Clara Lemlich