Today in Herstory: Women Are Losing Big in the Depression

Today in Herstory: Women Are Losing Big in the Depression


December 12, 1932: If it seems as if women are losing jobs even faster than men since the current Depression began and that women who are still employed are being exploited far more than before, there is now solid evidence to back up that impression. Mary Anderson, head of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, today brought out figures from several surveys around the country confirming these suspicions.



In New York and Illinois, employment records show that the number of women who lost jobs was greater than that of men in a large number of industries employing both men and women, and was also the case in virtually all occupations in which a majority of workers are female. Women in executive or supervisory positions faced the worst cutbacks.

A survey last year showed that about 20% of women in the country’s 19 largest cities were out of work, and in eight of these cities the percentage was even greater. The overall unemployment rate for the U.S. that year was 16.3%, up from 3.2% in 1929. This year the jobless rate hit 24.1%. An unemployment census taken in April, 1930, just six months after the current economic downturn began, already showed 668,661 women out of work, 10% of whom were heads of families.

Wage cuts have been a widespread phenomenon during the past three years, and though a New York State survey showed the salary declines for women have actually been slightly less than those for men (21.5% vs. 22.5%), the impact has been much greater, because women were earning substantially less than men to begin with. Interestingly, figures published by the Minimum Wage Board of Ontario show women’s wages in that Canadian Province have declined by only 1.7%. Just how low some women’s salaries have slipped in the U.S. is shown by a recent survey of 7,800 women in the garment-making industry, made at the request of Connecticut’s Democratic Governor, Wilbur Cross. Many women were paid from $4 to $6 for a 48 to 50 hour week. The wages paid to those who do piecework couldn’t be determined precisely because no records were kept.

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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/12/12/today-in-herstory-women-are-losing-big-in-the-depression/