Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

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Hama
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Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#1

Post by Hama » 28 Dec 2016, 03:51

We all know the images of 'Rosey the riveter' and such, women filling vital jobs in heavy industry during wartime. But I'm curious does anyone have any info on what employment was like for women in these kind of jobs (e.g shipyards, munitions or auto factories, mechanics, etc.) in the two decades before America entered WW2?

Didn't women in America, as in other countries, find themselves filling those kind of jobs during WW1? If so, were there many that remained in their jobs post war? Or did those jobs mostly revert back to male workers after 1918? Were above mentioned jobs quite closed to women during the interwar years, or did the impact of WW1 do anything to make those kind of jobs open to women before WW2?

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Re: Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#2

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 28 Dec 2016, 06:48

Women worked in industrial production from the start. In the 19th Century US they were doing things like detailed piece work in garment factories, cigar rolling... Sinclairs 'The Jungle' is a easily accessible description of Chicago industrial workers in the late 19th Century. Chicago was no different than Kansas city, Minneapolis, Houston, or any other post frontier city. The agriculture sector in the US was mechanizing and shedding labor to the cities. The urban centers and industrial jobs were one destination of the 17-22 y/o women leaving the farms.

Anne Douglasses 'The Femmenization of American Culture' is a difficult read, but it has some analysis of what urban working class women were doing in the 19th Century. If you really dig there are a variety of statistics from various government agencies, and university research papers.


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Re: Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#3

Post by Hama » 28 Dec 2016, 14:08

Cheers. Did women in industrial work find themselves sidelined for jobs during the Great Depression (i.e. were employers giving preference to what jobs were still able to male workers)? Also I'm assuming women in these sectors faced similar racial inequality in job competitiveness as their male counterparts in the factories and shipyards before WW2?

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Re: Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#4

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 28 Dec 2016, 19:44

Hama wrote:Cheers. Did women in industrial work find themselves sidelined for jobs during the Great Depression (i.e. were employers giving preference to what jobs were still able to male workers)? Also I'm assuming women in these sectors faced similar racial inequality in job competitiveness as their male counterparts in the factories and shipyards before WW2?
I am unsure. Since 'Industrial' or 'manufacturing' employment statistics can include or usually include administrative persons then women might not be necessarily disfavored for men in the larger scheme. In the case of skilled trades workers and master craftsmen women were very under represented, so statistics there might not be very meaningfull. In a lot of cases the male in a family would usually have had the advantage in skilled industrial work experience & therefore more marketable, so the couples would usually choose the strategy of him taking work first while the woman would take care of the home & children.

I have seen some evidence or argument that the use of domestic servants in urban settings was stable or increased slightly during the Depression. Low wages kept such labor affordable for the middle & upper classes, so more urban women would have remained employed as cleaners or cooks. Not sure if that would have been significant in urban employment or not.

There is some, but not conclusive evidence for Douglasses argument that the growth of the middle class in the late 19th Century and through the 1920s took more women out of industry than other factors. That is the wives & daughters of middle class income families had less incentive to seek work in any sort of urban industrial setting. Plus the social norm of that era, of the middle class wife as a household manager & husbands assistant led women out of the industrial workforce.

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Re: Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#5

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 28 Dec 2016, 19:56

Another factor to investigate is the training of women for industrial administrative work in the US high school system. From the latter 19th Century the public high schools had a strong vocational ciriculum. the males were give what amounted to several hours a week of apprentice basics in hands on craft training. The women had classes in stenography, and other office or management service skills. Even if they did not take such work when leaving the public schools these women had some training in using a typewriter & other office tools. They represented a fair size pool of partially trained labor ready for the industrial surge of 1939-44.

On the factory floor side former farm women represented another pool of experienced labor. The 1920s-1940 was the peak of transfer of labor from the rural agricultural sector to the urban industry. A portion of women raised on farms represented a labor pool who had considerable hands on experience with tools.

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Re: Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#6

Post by OpanaPointer » 28 Dec 2016, 21:04

The Lowell, Massachusetts, mills are the poster child for women in the workforce. The mills were run rather like Catholic boarding schools.
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Re: Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#7

Post by Richard Anderson » 28 Dec 2016, 22:06

In 1940, women made up 14.2 million (25%) of the civilian labor force of whom 1.7 million were unemployed. Another 36 million women were not in the labor force. Just under 11 million of the 12.5 million employed were in non-agricultural jobs. Of those employed, 4,000 were in the aircraft industry (>1% of the total employment in the industry) and 41,299 were in the auto industry (8% of the total employment in the industry).
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Re: Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#8

Post by Hama » 29 Dec 2016, 15:34

Cheers for the replies lads, that's some good info to start on.

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Re: Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#9

Post by Sheldrake » 30 Dec 2016, 00:56

Hama wrote:Cheers. Did women in industrial work find themselves sidelined for jobs during the Great Depression (i.e. were employers giving preference to what jobs were still able to male workers)? Also I'm assuming women in these sectors faced similar racial inequality in job competitiveness as their male counterparts in the factories and shipyards before WW2?
The short answer is yes, at least in Britain and France. Both countries had mobilised a large part of their manpower in the Great War. Women replaced men on the land and in many industries. (Though actually women were heavily employed in some industries before the war including textiles and even coalmines) Follow this link and the others from it.
http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/12-things ... -world-war

After the war was over, in general the men came back and claimed their jobs.

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Re: Women in industrial jobs before WW2?

#10

Post by Hama » 31 Dec 2016, 13:42

I see, thanks for the info and that link.

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