Curators Office

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Women at Work
Women at Home
Curators Office
The Changing Role of Women
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Mrs. Wakefield

• I have taught Social Studies for the past 11
  years and enjoying challenging my students.
  Technology is an important part of learning today
  therefore, you will be creating one of these in
  class soon!!

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Women at Home


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Orphans and homelessness

• Mothers, both married and unmarried, unable to
  care for infants, often left then on the steps of
  hospitals. Since the mid 19th c., abandoned
  children in NYC has been sent west to become
  adopted by new families. This program was called
  the orphan train, after the trains that moved
  west carrying children to their new adoptive
  families. Up to 90,000 children were sent west
  by the time the program ended in the 1920s.
  Often this was the only one option for women to
  care for their children as economic conditions
  led to homelessness.

http//2.bp.blogspot.com/_473nrD5vEv8/R0dD39NtxmI/
AAAAAAAAAKc/NnVWSwppGMM/s400/Homeless-Mother-Child
-and.jpg
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Womens fashion

• The 1920s saw the emergence of three major
  women's fashion magazines Vogue, The Queen, and
  Harper's Bazaar. Vogue was first published in
  1892, but its up-to-date fashion information did
  not have a marked impact on women's desires for
  fashionable garments until the 20's. These
  magazines provided mass exposure for popular
  styles and fashions.

http//pro.corbis.com
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Changing fashion of women

• The feminine liberation movement had a strong
  effect on women's fashions. Most importantly, the
  corset was discarded! For the first time in
  centuries, women's legs were seen. A more
  masculine look became popular, including
  flattened breasts and hips, and bobbed hair.
  During the early 1920s, waistlines were at the
  waist, but were loose and not fitted. Women wore
  suits with long hemlines and somewhat full
  skirts, often with belts at the waist of the
  jackets. Dress and suit bodices alike were worn
  loose, even baggy.

http//www.primarysourcelearning.org/teach/lq/013/
images/flapper.jpg
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Grandma helps out

• Grandparents step in to help with the children
  during the war while women enter the workforce in
  greater numbers. After the war, they gained the
  vote, and other measures of legal and political
  equality. Slowly a greater variety of jobs
  became open to them. People began to accept the
  idea that a woman could pursue a career separate
  from her role as a wife and mother.

http//pro.corbis.com/images/42-20041921.jpg?size
67uid7B663F37CE-B33E-46D6-BEB1-FF3909DFC16E7D
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Making their mark in aviation

• 1921 - Adrienne Bolland is the first woman to fly
  over the Andes
• 1921 - Bessie Coleman becomes the first African
  American, male or female, to earn a pilot's
  license
• 1922 - Lillian Gatlin is the first woman to fly
  across America as a passenger
• 1928 - June 17 - Amelia Earhart is the first
  woman to fly across the Atlantic -- Lou Gordon
  and Wilmer Stultz did most of the flying
• 1929 - August - first Women's Air Derby is held,
  and Louise Thaden wins, Gladys O'Donnell takes
  second place and Amelia Earhart takes third
• 1929 - Florence Lowe Barnes - Pancho Barnes -
  becomes the first woman stunt pilot in motion
  pictures (in "Hell's Angels")
• 1929 - Amelia Earhart becomes the first president
  of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women
  pilots.

http//pro.corbis.com/images/42-20041450.jpg?size
67uid7BC48FF18B-44A8-4A15-B13E-02550178FF0C7D
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Uniforms in the factory

• Women who did find jobs, got paid very low
  salaries compared to men, and got very few hours.
  They were able to find jobs as school teachers,
  or in factories if they were lucky.

http//users.ox.ac.uk/peter/workhouse/misc/LeedsW
omen.jpg
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Women in Film

• In the 20s, women in film sat at the top of the
  food chain with nary a shark bite, occupying
  niches equal in the hierarchy with men. In the
  years 1912 to 1920, female stars controlled about
  twenty film companies. Women often worked as film
  editors and cinematographers. The female stars
  of short films often managed their own production
  companies and wrote, produced, and directed the
  films in which they starred.

http//www.vintageperiods.com/
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Women in the workplace

• Between 1910 and 1920, Connecticut experienced a
  19.9 percent growth in the number of women
  employed with a concurrent population increase of
  23.9 percent, and a growth of 19.8 percent in the
  entire work force. However, it is clear that the
  increased number of women in the work force did
  not expand disproportionately with the growth in
  population. It is also true that the women
  workers did not take over many skilled or high
  paying male jobs.

http//www.old-picture.com/american-history-1900-1
930s/pictures/Typing-Woman.jpg
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Women in the kitchen

• The availability of natural gas and electricity
  to homes brought about changes. Most city
  dwellers would have had electricity by the
  1920's, but rural farm homes would still be using
  kerosene lamps for light, a wood stove for
  cooking or perhaps a kerosene stove like the one
  on the right hand wall here in the display. Gas
  stoves and a wood icebox would have been found in
  the city.

http//pro.corbis.com/images/42-20042055.jpg?size
67uid7B29AF38A6-BC4D-426D-AE94-78429C6925717D
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Womens clothing

• Women shed the heavy, cumbersome clothing.
  Skirts no longer brushed the ground some even
  rose above the knees. A typical womans dress in
  1928 had seven yards of cloth compared with
  nineteen at the beginning of the century.

http//www.laportecountyhistory.org/images/20'sfas
hion1a.jpg
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Hairstyles and Cosmetics

• In the 1920s, the bob was the in hairstyle
  hair was cut about mid-neck length and then
  curled with curling irons, or set into a
  permanent wave.
• Cosmetics like lipstick, eye liner, and face
  powder emerged for the first time. Unfortunately
  the science did not catch up with the demand and
  in the early years cosmetics used toxic
  chemicals, which could cause burns or scars.

http//www.ohiohistorycentral.org/images/1081.jpg
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Getting the important information

• An invention, which soon after became a popular
  fad, is the radio. Because of no invention of the
  TV, the radio was their TV. And, it really did do
  pretty much everything the TV does for us. If you
  tuned in at the right time, you could catch
  comedy shows, news, live events, jazz, variety
  shows, drama, opera, you name it, the radio had
  it!

http//www.vintageperiods.com/sites/Phenderson/_fi
les/Image/520Radio(10).jpg
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New styles in swimwear

• Although there were plenty of rule-breakers,
  men's and women's swimsuits remained cumbersome
  overall until late in the 1920s. Mimicking
  streamlined '20s fashion, women's swimsuits
  became tighter sleeveless tank-style suits that
  stopped mid-thigh.

http//www.vintageperiods.com/flappers.php
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Political activism

• In August 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the
  US Constitution achieved ratification by the
  required number of states and became law. It had
  taken more than seventy years of determined
  effort starting with the first organized womens
  rights conference, at Seneca Falls, NY.

http//pro.corbis.com/images/BE044702.jpg?size67
uid7B281C9966-B26A-4123-85BB-D1BBF3F578E67D
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Flappers of the 20s

• The flapper was the heroine of the Jazz Age. With
  short hair and a short skirt, with turned-down
  hose and powdered knees - the flapper must have
  seemed to her mother like a rebel. The typical
  flapper was a young women who was often thought
  of as a little fast and maybe even a little
  brazen. Mostly, the flapper offended the older
  generation because she defied conventions of
  acceptable feminine behavior. The flapper was
  "modern." Traditionally, women's hair had always
  been worn long. The flapper wore it short, or
  bobbed and she used make-up. The flapper wore
  baggy dresses which often exposed her arms as
  well as her legs from the knees down.

http//www.alc.co.jp/clubalc/haiku/photo/haiku/546
.jpg
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Women and shopping

• The early twentieth centuries were the age of the
  independent mom-and-pop store. As residents moved
  into the suburbs created by the new street
  railways and railroads, small family-run stores
  sprang up to meet their needs. These new
  groceries, meat markets, vegetable stands, and
  bakeries typically reflected the ethnic
  demographics of the neighborhood. It was the
  womens job to do the daily shopping.

http//pro.corbis.com/images/42-20042101.jpg?size
67uid7B3AECAC3E-5C33-45E0-8458-65D97B9975707D
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• http//www.geocities.com/flapper_culture/
• http//www.murrayontravel.com/carolnolan/fashionhi
  story_1920ladies.html
• http//womenshistory.about.com/od/aviationpilots/a
  /av_timeline.htm
• http//www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/ct
  history/81.ch.07.x.htmld
• http//www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/5
  54.html
• Life and Times in 20th Century America series 1
  and 2
• David, Shannon Between the Wars America 1919
  1941 2nd edition, 1979
• Kallen, Stuart A. (ed.) The Roaring Twenties
  2002
• Time Life Books The Fabulous Century Vol. III,
  1969