Position of women - key facts

1920 - 19th Amendment

Women could vote under the same rules as men

League of Women Voters

Set up in 1920 to encourage women to vote

Women’s Bureau of Labour

Set up in 1920 to improve women’s working conditions and campaign for wider employment of women

Number of working women

• 1910 - 7,640,000

• 1940 - 13,000,000

1932 Women’s Bureau of Labour Report

97% of women in slaughtering and meat packing were working as the only wage earner in the family, or to boost the husbands wage, not because they wanted to work

New Deal aid

• Federally funded camps for jobless women after 1934 (Camp Tera set up in 1933, largely by private donations)

• By 1936, there were 36 camps taking 5000 women a year

• Only took women for 2 or 3 months and provided no work or wages → only training was in budget management

Housewives Leagues

• Set up by Fannie Peck in Detroit in 1930

• Encouraged women to shop in black run stores and to organise local help for those in need

1940 Selective Training and Service Act

Trained women to fill the places of men who had been drafted into the military, including in shipbuilding and aircraft assembly

Extension of 1941 Lanham Act’s childcare provision

• Only 16% of married women in 1940 worked (because of childcare problems)

• By 1944, there were 130,000 children in daycare

• Percentage of married women in the workforce rose to 23%

• Provisions ended in 1946

Women’s Land Army of America

• Reformed to provide farmworkers countrywide

• Rough estimate of 3 million women working in agriculture in June 1943

WW2 - Black women

• Black women could train for professions where they had previously not been welcome → number on nursing courses rose from 1108 in 1939 to 2600 in 1945

• In one Detroit rubber plant, white women refused to share toilets with black women

Post-war employment changes

• About half the married women who worked during the war left when it ended, through choice, social pressure or because federally-funded daycares closed down in 1946

• The percentage of 45-54 year old married women who worked rose from 10.1% in 1940 to 22.2% in 1950 → wider range of jobs available (restrictions on married women lifted during war and rarely reinstated)

• In 1936, 82% of people thought married women should not work; in 1942, it was only 13%

Suburbs

In 1960, 19 million more people lived in suburbs than in the 1950s

Shopping malls

First built in 1954 in Detroit suburbs

1963 Commission of Enquiry on the Status of Women report

• Praised 1963 Equal Pay Act and wider opportunities for women in federal government

• Equal Pay Act needed enforcing

• Only 12,000 guidance counsellors for all state schools → few trained → patchy and dangerous advice to girls

1966 National Organisation of Women

• Aimed to work within political system to get equality and better enforcement of Civil Rights Act and Equal Pay Act

• Pressured Congress to pass an Equal Rights Act

Young radicals

• Predominantly under 30, white, middle-class and college educated

• Many worked with radical groups such as the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) or Students for a Democratic Society (SDC)

‘Voice of the Women’s Liberation Movement’ magazine

• Started in March 1968 and sold 200 copies → next year it sold 2000 copies and collapsed under the workload

26 August 1970 strike

• Almost every feminist group, from NOW to the National Coalition of American Nuns participated

• NOW membership rose over 50%

NOW membership

• 1967 - 1000

• 1974 - 40,000

• 1979 - 100,000

Phyllis Schafly

Set up a group called STOP ERA to campaign against an Equal Rights Act in 1972

1967 Executive Order

• Johnson extended his executive order calling for affirmative action to improve employment conditions for those discriminated against on the grounds of race, creed or colour to cover sexual discrimination as well

• The order only covered federal employees or businesses working for the federal government

1972 Eisenstadt v Baird

Allowed access to contraception to unmarried as well as married women

1973 Roe v Wade

• Abortion was federally legalised

• Rules about the timing and health of the mother

Equal Rights Act

• Passed as an amendment to the Constitution by Congress in 1972

• Deadline of 1982 for ratification by 38/50 states

• 15 states still refused to ratify ERA by 1982

Excluded women

• Congress of Labor Union Women → focused on the rights of working women, especially in industrial women

• Mexican American Women’s Organization

• National Alliance of Black Feminists

Percentage of women in Congress

<4%

Percentage of professional positions filled by men in the 1940s

90%

Gender pay gap in the 1970s

20%