Chapter 9

Question 1

How were black nurses treated differently than white nurses during World War II?

Answer 1

They were often assigned menial, not skilled, tasks.

Question 2

Dorothea Lange’s photograph, “Migrant Mother,” became an icon of the Depression decade because it

Answer 2

illustrated the suffering of families caught up in the nation’s economic collapse.

Question 3

Although Rosie the Riveter succeeded in breaking down sex-segregated labor patterns, the press instead chose to emphasize that

Answer 3

these women had maintained their femininity.

Question 4

How did some white women respond to the employment of African American women in the defense industries?

Answer 4

In a show of solidarity, they demanded that African American workers be paid equal wages.

Question 5

What role did First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt play in the New Deal?

Answer 5

She pushed the president to pay more attention to the problems of African Americans and women.

Question 6

How did World War II impact the lives of Mexican women in the United States?

Answer 6

Employers stopped asking for proof of legalization because they needed all the workers they could find.

Question 7

How were the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) different from the other women’s military agencies?

Answer 7

WASPs performed high-status male jobs such as serving as test pilots.

Question 8

How did the Social Security Act of 1935 reinforce women’s inequality as wage workers?

Answer 8

Women only received benefits after their husband died if they quit their paying jobs.

Question 9

The 1932 National Economy Act helped set a trend of firing or not hiring

Answer 9

women whose husbands already had jobs.

Question 10

Japanese American internment during World War II led to the erosion of

Answer 10

the strong patriarchal authority of the Japanese household.

Question 11

In addition to male employment rates, what other rate dropped during the Great Depression?

Answer 11

The fertility rate

Question 12

Black women fought persistent discrimination in the defense industries by

Answer 12

organizing a march against U.S. Employment Services offices.

Question 13

How did World War II affect the lives of Chinese women in America?

Answer 13

Jobs in the defense industry offered significant economic improvements over the work they had traditionally done.

Question 14

Social reformers Julia Lathrop and Frances Perkins opposed the ERA because they

Answer 14

believed it would damage protective labor laws for women.

Question 15

Why did more women serve in local government rather than on the national level during the 1920s?

Answer 15

Many local positions were nonpartisan and seemed more appropriate for women.

Question 16

How did American housewives’ lives change in the 1920s?

Answer 16

Women were expected to be better consumers, provide cleaner homes, and raise healthier children.

Question 17

What concerns were raised by women enlisting in the military during World War II?

Answer 17

Women could fall prey to sexual immorality and drunkenness.

Question 18

What was the job market like for African American women after World War I?

Answer 18

Most African American women were engaged in farm work and domestic service.

Question 19

How did the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) reflect existing assumptions about women’s subordinate role in the workforce?

Answer 19

It allowed women to be paid lower wages than men.

Question 20

During World War II, women became the objects of a massive propaganda campaign to urge them to

Answer 20

work in the defense industry and other sectors of the economy.

Question 21

In terms of their sexual lives, American wives of the 1920s experienced change in

Answer 21

the increasing availability and respectability of reliable birth control.

Question 22

What also ended with the end of World War II?

Answer 22

Women’s brief venture into well-paid industrial labor

Question 23

Women’s military service during World War II was restricted and highly regulated largely because of

Answer 23

cultural anxieties about servicewomen sacrificing their femininity.

Question 24

How did homemaking become more complicated for women during the Great Depression?

Answer 24

Women had to deal with the presence of extended kin, as many families combined households.

Question 25

Why did support for reform movements diminish after World War I?

Answer 25

The Red Scare cast suspicion on all liberal reform initiatives as suspect and dangerous.

Question 26

What were the “slave markets” in New York City and other large cities during the 1930s?

Answer 26

The street corners where black women would stand waiting for white women to hire them

Question 27

Sociologists writing in the 1930s, assessing the psychological effects of the Depression, gave the impression that

Answer 27

men were hardest hit because they were traditionally the chief family wage earner.

Question 28

The main impact of the Nineteenth Amendment on women’s activism of the 1920s was to

Answer 28

expose the class, race, age, and ideological differences among women.