How Did The Great Depression Affect Women

The depression changed everyone’s role in society and people were fighting to stay alive. Women had no room to fight for women’s rights because they were too worried about feeding and clothing themselves and their families. Women who had worked so hard to advance their careers and for political freedom found themselves once again back in the domestic roles that the Cult of Domesticity had laid out for them. Moms were responsible for stretching resources and making sure that everyone was fed. This meant that sometimes women would go hungry just so their husbands and children could eat.

The Great Depression affected everyone and everything in America. It affected families, friends, businesses, jobs, cities, states, the entire country! But everyone, no matter whether they were a man, a woman, or an african american, was affected in different ways, some ways worst than others. Everyone who lived through the Great Depression had a different experience for themselves. The women had a tougher time surviving than the men. The white men got jobs faster than the african americans. The african americans were the first fired and the last hired.

Prior to World War II, many women were unemployed, due to the Great Depression which had started a decade before. With men always getting preference for jobs, there were very few jobs left for women. Consequently, not only were many occupations were reserved for men, but men were also paid wages up to five times higher for the same task as women. Some states also barred married women from holding jobs. However during World War II, America produced at an efficiency which was higher than ever. This meant that the women had an increasing number of jobs. Jobs in the public sector opened up. Since 1939, women progressively changed the idea of patriarchy and the cliché thinking of an average woman in the United States to be a wife and mother.

During the Great Depression, families began to slowly die they were unable to survive due to the unemployment rate. Once the father of the family lost his job it would be very hard to come back from that. In the 1930s, men were expected to be the breadwinners of their families. These unemployed men felt like failures because of their inability to provide for their families. Men were very emotional about losing their jobs and it would lead to fights between the husband and wife. It was very common that a man would leave the family and the wife would be stranded with children. This is where the women really show their significance and step up as a person. Women saw their roles in the household enhanced as they juggled to make ends meet (Ware). They had to find jobs to support their children and provide them with food along with a roof over their heads. Some worked as teachers or nurses, anything that could bring money into their

The fortunate middle class Americans unexpectedly, during the Great Depression, didn’t even look twice at the luxuries of the world. Just as any American during that time, they had their focus on the necessities of life such as food and shelter. Many worried about losing their home because they could barely keep up with the paying bills. As a result, the Homeowners Loan Corporation (HOLC) helped refinance home loans supporting Americans and allowing them to stay within their homes. Many middle class and upper class women began writing their own personal budgeting accounts to help them pay bills as well as food. They also taught other women how to properly budget their own small sum of money. They budgeted to help them keep control of the money they had and make sure that they had the right amount of money with them all the time. In an article written by Richard C. and Sharon M. Hanes told a little bit about a lady and how she and other women handled money for the food for their family and others saying, “...prided herself on "making do" when feeding her family. If very careful, a woman could feed a family of six on five dollars a week...Mothers could make a pot roast last an entire week...Vegetable gardens sprang up in backyards and vacant city lots. Women did their own canning, pickling, and preserving…” (Hanes). These women were inspiring and thought of the most interesting

The Great Depression affected many people and families in the 1930s. They had to deal with many different challenges and hardships. These families had to face hunger, unemployment, and some even with being homeless. Some families crowded into a small apartment or house with other families. Others lost their homes and moved into a tent in a Hooverville. To help with fathers being laid off from work, mothers would sometimes go out and look for work. In other cases, teens would travel by freight train or hitchhiking to find a job that they could send money home with. More often the husband would leave his family in search of a new job. This left family relationships torn up. The family would miss their father, but if he were to return without a job things would sometimes get worse. The fathers would feel like failures and would mope around the house. Thus leading to irritated wives which lead to more fights between them. Some fathers

The Great Depression broke people and their relationships apart. It strapped Americans of their money, way of life, and societal pattern. In Russell Baker’s memoir, Growing up, he talks about this and the experience his mother, Lucy Elizabeth, endured when giving up her youngest daughter Audrey. After the death of his father, George Baker, his mother was left with only “a few dollars of insurance money, a worthless Model T, several chairs, a table to eat from… no way to earn a living, and no prospects for the future” (Baker 84). She couldn’t care for her entire

jobs like teaching, civil service. Men worked in manufacturing and dominated the professions. Women did clerical work, or worked on the lower scale in a factory, or worked as domestics in other people?s homes.? (Dr Strom and Wood, pg. 1) More married women were at work in the 1930?s than in the 1920?s but they held the lowest paying jobs.

FEMALE UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE U.S: In the United States in the 1920s, only about 15 percent of white and 30 percent of black married women with wage-earning husbands held paying jobs. Most Americans believed that women should not work outside the home if their husbands held jobs. As a result of this attitude, wives seldom worked at outside jobs. However, some married women in desperate need took jobs in textile mills.

In both the 1930s and today, women have faced tyranny in the workplace. Throughout the Great Depression, women's employment rates increased; however, companies only hired them because they would work for lower wages. An article on working women in the 1930s reports that "According to the Social Security Administration, women's average annual pay in 1937 was $525, compared with $1,027 for men"(Ware). When employers do not pay females as much as males, it exhibits the unfair treatment of women in the workplace. Many in the 1930s felt that men were superior to women. In the same way, modern women have higher job rates, they have increased over 29% in the last 60 years; yet, men's wages are increasingly higher.Commentary Despite increased employment,

The Great Depression was a very influential era in American history, affecting many future generations. One of the most prevalent impacts it had on society was the extreme poverty that swept across the nation, affecting both people in cities and in the country. The main cause for this poverty was the mass loss of jobs among the middle class. Millions lost their jobs and consequently their homes. Families lived out of tents and cars in shanty towns or Hoovervilles. In these camps, many people didn’t have their basic human needs met, children and adults alike starved. They lived in clothes that were caked in dirt and tattered, too small for growing children and too cold for the frail elderly. Government relief programs attempted to help but offered little support to the now impoverished families of the millions that lost everything.

Being black during the Depression was very hard. You would be fired from any job you had and white men would take your place. On occasion if their were any whites out of work, they would call on blacks to be fired. Blacks didn't have jobs so they had no way to sustain themselves or their family. Although there wasn’t slavery during the civil war, African Americans would still sometimes be hired to work at homes to clean, and cook. The Library of Congress wrote, ¨The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of black Americans were out of work (Lib).¨ There was barely any money to pay Americans with, so they made significantly less in 1933, than in 1929. With no money there were more people starving, and only surviving off of their self grown foods, and local farming. Even with local farms, and gardens there still wasn’t enough for everyone to eat, due to not having enough money to buy seed.“In 1933, the average family income had dropped to $1,500, 40 percent less than the 1929 average family income of $2,300” (Enc). People were starved because of the lack of food. Many were forced to leave their homes and live on the streets, because they had nothing. From 1931-1940 alone there were no less than 8 million deaths in the United States. “Every sixth American farmer was affected by famine. People were forced

Change and hardship go hand in hand, because when hard times emerge society is forced to change. During the Great Depression the idea of gender roles stirred up a great deal of controversy but it also opened the door for change. It gave society a push into a new direction. In order to survive, a number of people had to move away from their traditional way of living in order to take care of their household (Goutour, November 5, 2013). It was now more acceptable and easier for women to find work, while men on the other hand had feelings of emasculation and hostility due to not being able to fulfill their role as the breadwinner (Hollingsworth & Tyyska,

Life during the Great Depression was very different from life today. Many people were living on the streets in shanties, which were houses made of cardboard and scraps of wood. Milk and sugar were luxuries; you couldn’t buy them unless you were very wealthy. Often, men tried to sell apples in the street, just to make a few cents. Unemployment was a giant problem during the 30s. By 1933, Canada’s unemployment rate was at 30%. One in five Canadians were dependent on government relief to sustain their lives.

Often times, it was difficult because most of the time it was men who worked and women who stayed home and worked on the house. “Role changes became the norm for women coping with and adapting to the economic changes brought on by the Great Depression. Men were drastically removed from the position of breadwinner, and many women were thrust into the position of working outside of the home. Women made up about 25% of the workforce” (Study.com). When looking for employment, men often lost their jobs and that is when women would come in and take the job they had. Men then stopped working and became the man of the home while she was working. Women who were getting these jobs were taking a huge part of the workload in the industries and were well known in the workplace. While the husband was out working, they wife stayed home to keep the house clean and do the small things such as; making dinner, keeping the house clean and making sure every small thing is correct. A diary from the Great Depression from a woman talks about the many struggles they had to go through everyday and how their lives changed quickly because they had to work. “I just got so busy. These past few years have been work, work, work, work. Before the stock market crashed, I had never worked before.” Before I used to watch my siblings during the day and hang out with my friends during the night. Now I get up very early to get to