history

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Impact of the New Deal on Women

Impact of the Depression on America: When the nation sank into a deep economic depression in the 1930s, the struggle to survive became increasingly difficult for many Americans, especially those among the lower economic classes. The government’s response to the nation’s economic depression, under the leadership of FDR and his New Deal, changed the role the federal government played in protecting the economic status of its citizens. By the end of the decade, the federal government would be much more involved in regulating industry and maintaining economic stability for the economy at large and in the individual lives of its citizens. Social Security would provide retirement income for most American workers and offer them disability insurance. Deposits in banks would now be protected and insured by the federal government. And through newly established government programs and agencies, the federal government would play a direct role in manipulating the nation’s economy.

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“The Migrant Mother” photograph of Florence Thompson by Dorothea Lange.

Both men and women experienced hardships during the depression. Families struggled to make ends meet. One out of four Americans in need of a job could not secure one. Often those who were fortunate enough to have a job, received reduced salaries and wages in return for their labor, and they accepted jobs beneath their experience and qualifications. This was especially true for African American women who often times could only find jobs as domestic servants and agricultural laborers, even though they were qualified for better paying employment.

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MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE: THE LOUISVILLE FLOOD OF 1937

Women helped their families to survive the depression through innovation. They became very resourceful at recycling materials to be used again instead of spending money on a product. Clothes sewn from flour sacks were common. Women expanded their gardens and canned their produce to provide food during the off seasons. They raised more chickens and milk cows, and sold their butter and eggs in an effort to bring in much needed money for their families. In short, they learned to make do with less, and make the most of what they had.

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EMPLOYMENT AND FAMILY

Outlook for Women

• Women’s Employment grew from 24.1% of

paid work force to 25.1%;

• The number of women holding elected

political positions remained relatively level;

• Women’s share of appointed government

positions increased during the Great

Depression, in part, because the New Deal

included the creation of the Labor

Department with approximately 1/3 of the

new positions being filled by women;

• While dissolutions of marriages and families

occurred, the divorce rate held fairly steady.

(Divorces cost money). Couples delayed

marrying, holding out for more prosperous

times.

Women’s Job Outlook: During the early 1930s, the nation suffered an unemployment rate of 25%, and many Americans took jobs that were considered beneath their qualifications and abilities. The 1930s were a time of desperation for many. For women, the Depression hurt their opportunities for securing well paid positions and created an attitude among many Americans that opposed and even resented married women working, but nonetheless the decade actually saw a very slight increase in the percentage of women working outside the home. It rose from 24.4% in 1930 to 25.4% in 1940.

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EMPLOYMENT

• In 1929, 40% of African American women were in the labor force.

• 35.8% domestic servants.

• 26.9% agricultural workers.

• Fewer than 5% held “white collar” jobs.

• Comparatively, 70% of white women employed held manufacturing or “white

collar” jobs.

• By 1940, women’s presence grew by 1%, but there were 160,000 fewer black

women in the workforce.

The decade’s economic instability cracked the gender divisions. Many women, especially those with families, stepped up to the plate and assumed a greater role in providing for and supporting their families. As they did this, resentment at married women working grew. Members of the public wrote letters to the Roosevelts expressing their opposition to married women working. They claimed that by working, women were taking badly needed jobs away from a man who needed the job to support his family. Underlying this criticism you’ll recognize is the assumption that women did not work to support their families. The stereotypes of women working just to buy luxury items or extra consumer goods that might enhance their families’ lifestyle persisted into the 1930s. In reality, however, women most often worked because their families desperately needed the incomes they earned. Women’s incomes enabled their families to survive or at least secured a more decent standard of living than they would have otherwise. Other criticisms of working married women centered on the accusation that by working, they neglected their domestic duties and fail to raise moral children. One critic argued, “All over the country, women marry and immediately return to their jobs, instead of endeavoring to live within their husband’s income and living a domesticated life and building a new home…. The women consistently dodge motherhood and go home after their work is done with a paper carton in one hand and a can opener in the other.” As women’s work outside the home increased, efforts to maintain traditional gender roles and separate spheres came to be challenged. Many Americans were uncomfortable with these challenges and experienced difficulty adjusting to and accepting them.

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GENDER EXPECTATIONS

• Society sought to

preserve the male

breadwinner role.

• Resentment of working

women increased.

FDR’s New Deal: When FDR was inaugurated in March 1933, the nation looked to our new leader to guide us out of the Depression. FDR introduced his New Deal that increased the government’s role in managing the economy and providing individual security to citizens. He appointed women to serve on many of the new program boards and in newly created government agencies. FDR appointed women to serve in government agencies from the diplomatic corps to the National Recovery Administration. A higher percentage of women received government appointments during the 1930s than at any other time up to that point in our nation’s history, except during WWI. Women gained the most ground in the new agencies, receiving over 44% of the positions in seven of the New Deal agencies. They did not receive an equal share of the top positions, however. The ten executive departments of the Administration remained male dominated. Women, primarily white women, received about one third of the appointments in the Departments of Labor, State, and Interior; but their numbers did not climb higher than 15% in the Departments of War, Navy, Commerce, and the Post Office. FDR appointed the first female cabinet member, Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor. Because the Works Progress Administration, WPA, prioritized employing native born, white Americans over immigrant populations and people of color, employment and relief programs did not benefit all populations equally.

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RESENTMENT OF EMPLOYED, MARRIED WOMEN.

• Legal sanctions: 1932 National Economy Act.

• School districts and colleges.

• Private industries.

“A man spends his income to support

his family while a woman spends for permanent waves and lipstick.”

Persistent notions about women belonging in the home continued despite their growing presence in the paid work force in previous decades. Attitudes, laws, and policies supported men fulfilling bread-winner roles. Women in the paid workforce often endured criticism for being selfish and working only for frivolous, non-essential purposes. Yet, for many women, particularly poor women, work remained a necessity for the survival of their families. During the Great Depression, vulnerable women risked job security in an effort to courageously strike for better pay and improved working conditions.

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SAN ANTONIO PECAN SHELLERS STRIKE

OF 1938

Emma Tenayuka

San Antonio Workers Alliance labor

leader.

Facing reduced wages, approximately 12,000 pecan crackers and shellers initiated a three-month strike on January 31, 1938 in San Antonio, Texas. Latina women comprised the majority of the work force, who prior to the strike put in ten-hour days, seven days a week during the peak of the season. Most women earned between $2 -$3 per day. Emma Tenayuca, with the Texas Workers Alliance of America, helped lead efforts to engage in a peaceful strike. A young, Mexican American activist, Tenayuca recognized the vulnerabilities Latina pecan workers faced: economic insecurity and fear of deportation. These were very valid concerns, afterall the federal government supported a “repatriation” effort during the Great Depression that supported deporting Mexican Americans, including U.S. citizens. Up to half a million people may have been deported. San Antonio city leaders supported the pecan factories and police arrested striking women. After 37-days of striking, strike organizers and factory owners began arbitration that eventually resolved the dispute by agreeing to increased wages and recognition of the International Pecan Shellers Union No. 172 right to collective representation of members. Union leaders dismissed Tenayuca from her organizing role when the press began highlighting her marriage to Texas Communist Party Chairman, Homer Brooks, and her ties to the Communist Party. Following on the heels of the pecan workers’ strike, the federal government adopted the Fair Labor Relations Act in the fall of 1938 that imposed a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour. In response, pecan companies, including the large Southern Pecan Shelling Company, shifted to mechanized processing that significantly reduced the need for human labor. In addition to revealing the courage and strength of Latina workers, the 1938 Pecan Workers Strike also illuminates how the passage of time reframes our understanding of history. Immediately following her removal from leading the strike, Tenayuca fled San Antonio to avoid threats. After distancing herself from the Communist Party and divorcing from Brooks, Tenayuca returned to San Antonio in the 1960s, where she taught bilingual education until her retirement in 1982. In her later years, Tenayuca received positive attention and recognition for her leadership. In 1991, the city inducted her into the San Antonio Women’s Hall of Fame.

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WOMEN’S RESILIENCE AND RESOURCEFULNESS:

• Women’s organization and union activities.

• Women’s resourcefulness within changing

family dynamics and structures.

• The impact of the New Deal on women’s

employment.

The reality is that women’s presence in the paid workforce increased slightly, overall, but women of color faced barriers and ongoing discrimination. While New Deal programs sought to promote economic security, they did not successfully challenge existing practices that relegated women of color to low paid, menial positions. Insufficient oversight of New Deal relief programs resulted is disparate distribution of aid, particularly on federally recognized Native American Reservations.

Women’s resourcefulness and resilience helped ensure that their families survived amid difficult circumstances. In spite of the challenges they faced, vulnerable women engaged in labor organizing and waged strikes. Within their homes, women resourcefully found ways to feed and clothe their families. Over the years, students have shared stories passed down in their families about grandmothers and ancestors who were notorious for saving and repurposing items – a practice benefitted their families during the Great Depression.

The challenges of the Great Depression and the government’s evolving response, helped galvanize women’s call for the government to serve All people. Representing the National Council of Negro Women, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, appealed to FDR in 1940. She wrote: “We, as a race, have been fighting for a more equitable share of those opportunities which are fundamental to every American citizen who would enjoy the economic and family security which a true democracy guarantees. Now we come as a group of loyal, self-sacrificing women who feel they have a right and a solemn duty to their nation.” Anticipating the coming war, Bethune asserted African American women’s entitlement to their full rights and patriotically pledged full support to the coming challenges the nation would soon face.

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DEFINING THE ROLE OF FIRST LADY: ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

FIRST LADY PUBLIC SUPPORT

Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt influenced President FDR. She redefined the role of first lady by leading an active, public and political life. When she came to the White House, she embodied a new figure for the wife of the president. Eleanor implemented several changes in the White House, she held a regular press conference, but only allowed female reporters to be present, thus she forced major newspapers who wanted to report about her news to hire female journalists. She published a regular newspaper column called “My Day.” Because her husband had been stricken with polio in 1921, she used her mobility to travel the country and bring back first hand reports to him. He encouraged her in this pursuit and relied upon her. (He gave her specific directions about how to inspect soup kitchens. If the personnel told her that the food was good, he asked if she had lifted the lid and tasted it herself to draw the same conclusion.) In 1941, Eleanor traveled to the Tuskegee Institute and demonstrated her support for African American pilots. Despite Secret Service agents’ misgivings, she boarded a plane piloted by flight instructor Charles Alfred Anderson.

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ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

Active Role

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt had been born into the privileged Roosevelt family. Her childhood was not a happy one, however. Her father, Elliott, was an alcoholic and suffered from depression. Her mother was cold and unloving towards her. Eleanor was lonely. It was not until she went away to school that she really felt happy and her character started to blossom. After school she engaged in settlement house work like other educated, privileged young women and she found this very fulfilling. In 1905, she married a distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During the next 10 years she gave birth to five children – four boys and one girl. Sara Roosevelt, mother-in-law, was controlling and undermined Eleanor’s own authority with her children. Sara saw that her house was attached to that of her FDR and Eleanor’s. (Imagine how much fun that must have been!) In 1917, Eleanor discovered love letters from Lucy Mercer, her social secretary, in her husband’s suitcase when she was unpacking it for him. Their marriage ended as a romantic relationship. She was some what ambivalent, she would get a divorce or remain married in name only. Sara encouraged them to stay married. Then, in 1921, when FDR was stricken with polio, Eleanor held the family together. Eleanor became more active in the Democratic Party politics. She claimed that she was doing it for Franklin to keep his name alive in politics so that he could assume an active political career again. She became a valued and important political partner to the future president.

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MARIAN ANDERSON: APRIL 9 , 1939.

Marian Anderson commented, “I am not

surprised at Mrs. Roosevelt’s action

because she seems to me to be one who

really comprehends the true meaning of

democracy. I am shocked beyond words to

be barred from the capital of my own

country after having appeared almost in

every other capital in the world.”

She generally promoted the domestic interests more vigorously than FDR did, especially during WWII. Her commitment to social justice still serves as an impressive example. She formed her own opinions and readily shared them with him. Following FDR’s death, President Harry Truman appointed her to the newly formed United Nations.

Eleanor represented an educated, privileged woman who was devoted to improving the lives of those less fortunate than she was. As first lady, she demonstrated how women could play an active and important role in national politics while also still being a family person – wife of the President, mother of five children.

When the Daughters of the American Revolution denied Marian Anderson the opportunity to perform at Constitution Hall, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization and helped organize Anderson’s performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

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CONCLUSIONS

WW II brings dramatic and rapid changes to women’s

employment opportunities.

Conclusions: It was not until the US entered WWII and massive numbers of Americans secured employment in the war industries and armed services that our nation really escaped from the clutches of the Great Depression. For almost all Americans, it had been a challenging decade, one in which the traditional gender roles for men and women came under new strains and challenges as people strove just to survive. Assumptions about the men and women working came to be questioned, and women’s right to work was definitely given the secondary priority behind men’s. Although women did not gain much political ground in elected positions, they did receive many appointments in the New Deal agencies and programs. So, just as the federal government was growing and expanding the role it would play in regulating the economy and protecting individuals’ security, American women secured positions in the expansion. The media continued to evolve and play an even more influential role in shaping people’s expectations of gender. In some respects, the media reinforced traditional notions about separate spheres and woman’s subservient position in society, but in other ways, the media opened new opportunities for women or at least exposed the public new perceptions of women.

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