How significantly did the position of women change, 1917-80?

Question 1

How did WW1 affect women in work?

Answer 1

took jobs in the war, paid less than men, fired after the war

Question 2

What amendment gave women the vote under the same rules as men?
When was it ratified?
What was the name of the group that was set up the same year to drive women to work?
List two groups of women that were unlikely to vote.

Answer 2

The 19th Amendment
18th August 1920
The League of Women Voters
Black women, poor women (or voted their husbands’ way)

Question 3

What did people believe about women’s war work?
What is an example of a job that was barred to married women?
What is an example of a job that became acceptable for women to work in?
What group was set up in 1920 to improve women working conditions and campaign for the wider employment of women?
The number of women in work increased from _______ in 1910 to ________ in 1940
Why was lwork-life still difficult for women?

Answer 3

It had been “an exception for exceptional times”
Teaching
Typing Pools
Women’s Bureau of Labor
7,640,000
13,007,000
Usually paid less than men, “last hired, First fired”

Question 4

Who did flappers behave similarly to?
Why were some people shocked by flappers?
Despite helping to shift the public perception of women, why did many flappers adopt a more traditional role once married?

Answer 4

Young men; they smoked, drank, drove cars, went to male-dominated sporting events.
Assumed they allowed themselves sexual freedom
For employment

Question 5

Rather than across gender how did the great depression affect people?
What did the 1932 Women’s Bureau of Labor report on women workers in slaughtering and meat packing?

Answer 5

Across class
97% were working as the only wage earner, or to boost the husband's wage, not because they wanted to work

Question 6

Why was the Women’s Bureau largely ignored within the Bureau of labour?
Give two reasons and two examples of why people thought that it was hindering women’s progress
Which sectors of work did labour regulations often not apply to (where women and blacks mostly worked)?
What happened to women if they couldn’t get work?

Answer 6

Because of its focus on women
It supported government legislation (eg. 1908 Muller vs Oregon, women shouldn’t work longer than 10hrs per day- led to women breaking rules so as not to lose jobs),
When it pushed for legislation (minimum wage; men did not have minimum wage)
Farming and domestic services
They had to apply to relief programmes, would often find themselves in the migrant labour market- Mexican-Americans, Mexicans and Black-Americans all competing for badly paid, difficult work in appalling conditions

Question 7

What part of the New Deal provided some benefits for the poorest families?
What did Eleanor Roosevelt want for jobless young women? What was set up in 1933?
By 1936 how many of these were there set up and how many women did they take a year?
What was bad about them and what did they only train women in?
For every dollar a White man earned how many cents did A) a white women earn B) a black women earn
Who was Fannie Peck and what did she set up?
What did this do?

Answer 7

The New Deal’s Aid for Families with Dependent Children
Camps similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps (for young men) which would allow jobless young women to work in forestry.
Camp Tera (funded largely by private donations)
36 camps. 5,000
They only kept women for 2 or 3 months and provided no work or wages, budget management
A) 61 cents B) 23 cents
A black woman, Housewives Leagues in Detroit in 1930
Encouraged women to shop in black run stores and organise local help.

Question 8

What did WW2 show that women could do?
What act of 1940 prepared to draft men into the military and trained women to fill their places?
What percentage of married women worked in 1940 due to childcare problems?
What 1941 act, extended in 1944 helped with childcare?
How many children were in daycare by 1944?
The percentage of married women in the workforce rose from ___% to ___%
What women’s WW1 group reformed in WW2 to provide farmworkers countrywide?
In June 1943 roughly how many women were working in agriculture?
Due to worker shortages (WW2), the number of black women on nursing courses rose from _____ in ______ to _____ in ______
Why was work-life still difficult in some places for black women?

Answer 8

Showed that they could do men’s work well
the 1940 Selective Training and Service Act
16%
The 1941 Lanham Act childcare provision
130,000
15%, 23%
The Women’s land army
3 million
1,108 in 1939, 2,600 in 1945
Some employers said that black women were bound to have and spread sexual diseases, in Detroit, white women refused to share toilets with black women (one example of employee difficulty)

Question 9

What happened to many women in work when factorises switched over from producing war goods to other goods?
Why did some men not return to work when they got back from war?
What closed down in 1946, meaning that many women had to leave work?
Which women had no choice but to work as a result of the war?

Answer 9

They were not kept on, fired to make way for returning men.
They took advantage of GI bills that guaranteed education to returning soldiers
Federally funded daycare centres
Women that had been widowed, divorced or separated

Question 10

The percentage of married women (aged 45-54) in the workforce rose from ____ in ____ to ____ in ____
Why did WW2 help contribute to this?
In ____, ___% of people thought that married women shouldn’t work in ____it was __% and in ____ only ___%
What may have been a factor in employers choosing to employ women after the war?
What did a small proportion of working women begin to do and what did they face as a result?

Answer 10

10.1% in 1940 to 22.2% in 1950
Before the war, many married women were barred from many jobs, restrictions lifted during the war, women had been trained in more types of jobs during the war
1936, 82%
1938, 78%
1942, 43%
Lower wages for the same work
Move from clerical work in offices to the main business (such as insurance or advertising). Hostility from the both the group they had left and the predominantly male world they entered.

Question 11

Why did some low-cost black suburbs grow up within reach of white suburbs?
Why didn’t black people usually try to buy in a white suburb?
What happened to William and Daisy Myers?

Answer 11

To provide a convenient pool of maids, cooks, nannies, gardeners and other staff
They faced similar problems to those trying to integrate schools/other facilities
Attempted to integrate into a white suburb, were met with 3,000 stone-throwers and burning crosses. State officials tried to keep them protected and Daisy was invited to join the neighbourhood association of women

Question 12

In ____, __ million more people lived in suburbs than in ____
Why did both parents not often work in the suburbs?
How was the suburban housewife life portrayed?
What happened to non-white women in the cities who couldn’t afford to move out to the suburbs?

Answer 12

1960, 19, 1950
Childcare made living more expensive
Something to aspire to
They increasingly became a part of groups in non-white ghettos which had to be exceptional to change their situation

Question 13

When was the first large out-of-town shopping mall built, where?
From 1917 to 1980 how were women who lived on farms cut off from changes and opportunity that urban women were more able to seize?

Answer 13

1954, Detroit suburbs

By distance, economically

Question 14

What report did President Kennedy set up in 1961?
What did Act did it praise (that had been released the same year as it was published, 1963)?
What fraction of workers did women account for?
As well as discrimination in training, work, pay and promotions, why was minimum wage an issue for women?
What was one other problem married women faced with work?

Answer 14

A Commission of Enquiry on the Status of Women
the Equal Pay Act
1/3
It often didn’t apply to the low-paid work that many women did
There wasn’t enough daycare

Question 15

The Education Act of which year had said that schools should have counsellors?
Roughly how many counsellors were there for all the state schools in the USA?
Why was this bad in terms of women’s careers?
What year was the Civil Rights Act changed to include sexual equality?
Was this particularly helpful?

Answer 15

1958
12,000
They did not consider the needs of the girls that the counselled. Women were not encouraged into higher education
1964
no, women found that there was a wide gap between the passing of a law and its enforcement

Question 16

Who published “The Feminine Mystique”, what year?
What was the name of the first national women’s movement set up, when?
What did the organisations aim to get better enforcements of?
Since 1923 what Act had regularly been asked of congress to pass?
List three ways women’s rights movements attempted to change Congress’s mind
What was their work mainly about (three things)?

Answer 16

Betty Friedan, 1963
National Organisation for Women (NOW)
The Civil Rights Act/Equal Pay act
An Equal Rights Act
Holding meetings, collecting petitions/data, demonstrated and lobbied politicians
Educating people, campaigning about problems and providing support for working women.

Question 17

Who were the young radicals of the women’s movement?
Why did working with the SNCC/SDS often not work for women trying to raise the issue of women’s equality?
What did the local, radical groups draw direct parallels between?
What phrase did they use?
When was the first national women’s magazine, what was it called?
How many copies did it sell in its first/second year before it collapsed under its workload?
What did the media focus on due to the rising number of magazines and news sheets?

Answer 17

Predominantly women under 30, white middle-class and college-educated sometimes worked but at a lower level than the men, they went to college with even if they had better qualifications.
The men dominating the events were often sexist; condescending and sometimes genuinely hostile
the situation of black Americans
“Women’s liberation”
March 1968, Voice of the Women’s liberation movement
200/2000
the more extreme and inflammatory elements of feminism

Question 18

What date did both strands of the women’s movement come together to strike?
What were the same three demands presented?
What percentage did NOW membership increase by due to publicity of the strike?
NOW membership rose by ___ in ___ to ___ in ____

Answer 18

26th August 1970
Equal opportunity in jobs/education, free childcare, free abortion on demand
Over 50%
1,000 in 1967 to 40,000 in 1974

Question 19

What were some radical women declaring which hindered the movement?
Why did many conservatives reject the movement?
Some opposition disliked only the free contraception/abortion. Who, however, opposed demands for an Equal Rights Act and what was her campaign name?
What were three of her reasons for her 1972 campaign?

Answer 19

That all men were the enemy
“un-American”-abandonment of traditional roles
Phyllis Schlafly, Stop Taking Our Privileges ERA (STOP ERA)
Women were designed to have babies, didn’t want her daughters to be able to do some jobs (eg army), women would lose various tax and benefit privileges under equal rights

Question 20

In what year did President Johnson extend his executive order to improve employment conditions to cover sexual discrimination?
What employees did this cover?
From what year did a few states allow for abortions in very tightly controlled circumstances?
What case allowed unmarried women access to contraception, what year was this?
What date was abortion federally legalised, what was the name of the case?

Answer 20

1967
Federal employees/federal business employees only
1970
Eisenstadt v Baird, 1972
22nd January 1973, Roe v Wade

Question 21

What date was the Equal Rights Act passed as an amendment to the constitution by congress?
How many states did it needed to ratify it?
What was the deadline for the ratification?
What was the result?

Answer 21

22nd March 1972
38
1982, ten years later
fifteen states still refused to ratify ERA in 1982, no civil rights act

Question 22

What year did the USA not sign up to the UN policy of introducing non-discrimination against women in all aspects of life?
Why could advancement be considered limited (two reasons)?
Why did the women’s movement disintegrate?

Answer 22

1979
Enforcing legislation was still very difficult, employers became more practised at finding “acceptable” reasons for discrimination
Conservative opposition, Fragmentation of groups due to having different aims