Impact of the Great Depression on Women

• Married women had to manage households on less money (Era where 80% believed that women should be homemakers).
• Unskilled women workers were usually fired before men, on the grounds that they were taking scarce jobs from men.
• Fewer jobs available in domestic services
• 1930's, 80% Americans opposed married women and mothers working

  1942, this figure dropped to 40%
• 1932 Women's Bureau of Labour Report (women working in slaughtering and meat packaging) showed that 97% were working as only earner in the family or to boost husbands wage.
• Difference in wages - women got 60% of men's wage
• Women were more likely to hold jobs in domestic services, teaching, secretary, nursing, social workers = less vulnerable jobs / caring jobs.
• Labour regulations implemented only applied to industrial work, not domestic or farming, which was heavily populated by Black women
• Every $1 a white man earned, white women earned 61 cents and black women earned 23 cents