Working Women: It's Nothing New

Many people assume that women did not start working outside the home until the late 1960s or the 1970s. Not true.

I'm not talking about Rosie the Riveter or all the women who worked at aircraft factories and shipyards during World War II. No, this goes back a lot further than that.

I'm also not talking about housework, though it bears mentioning that such work could be backbreaking and spirit-crushing. Did you know that Mary Todd Lincoln--who was raised in a slave-owning home--sewed her children's clothes and often cooked their meals? Sometimes she had a servant to help her, sometimes not (she had quite a temper, so she had trouble keeping the help).

No, I'm talking about paid work. Women have been contributing to the family income for centuries, but because of the type of work they did, and the way laws and surveys attributed all income to the man of the house, working women have been largely ignored.

Making your own clothes and cooking meals from scratch was normal, before and during the 20th century. Laundry was one task, though, that could be bundled up and given to someone else to do. Usually the poorest women in town, often widows with children, took in laundry in order to make some money.

Women who did laundry never ran ads for their services, and most worked in their own homes and yards. They often boiled water in huge kettles, lifting the hot, damp clothes in and out with broom handles. By the 19th century, most people expected their clothes to be scrubbed clean (using a board) and starched--even ironed. Irons were heated on stoves, so this was hot, sweaty, indoor work.

Here's a statistic: Before 1930, 20 to 30 percent of women in America earned money by taking in boarders. They provided meals and housekeeping. If the woman was married, though, she was not technically earning the money--her husband was.

I went through 1900 census records and saw household after household that listed a male head, with a full-time occupation. His wife would be listed next, with no occupation other than wife or mother. Then their children were listed. Then came one, two, three, six, or a dozen names of young men, most in the same occupation as the husband, and all single. Clearly, that wife was working very hard to bring in extra money by feeding and cleaning up after these young men!

From Linda Gordon's essay "U.S. Women's History" in the 1990s: "there was never a time in U. S. history when most working-class men could earn enough to become the sole providers for their families."

Single women in the 19th century worked as teachers, but usually quit when they married. Seamstresses often kept working, married or not--they needed the money! Women worked as cooks, servants, child-care providers, and midwives. Speaking of midwives. . .

For decades, a diary written from 1785 to 1812 lay ignored by serious historians. After all, it was written by a woman, a midwife, who never met anyone important.

Now that it's been published (you can even read it online), the information in it is incredible. Who could have ignored this, students now wonder? And what other treasures do we ignore, because women were just not considered contributing members of society?

A future hub will deal with another occupation ignored here: Sex workers.