The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of the Great Depression on the U.S. economy, with special emphasis on women in the workplace. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context of change for the structure of the American work force that came about as a result of the Great Depression, and then to discuss levels of employment and different types of jobs available to married and single women.
From the 1929 crash of the stock market to the onset of World War II, there was a persistence of what today would be (and indeed is) called a deep recession, as well as persistence of highly traditional cultural values informing Americans' experience of economic and cultural phenomena alike. In the years after World War I, American women readily entered the workplace in significant numbers. A number of economic and social forces converged during the 1930s around the issue of women in the workplace to significantly alter employment patterns throughout American business and industry. It is widely believed that the turning point for women's presence in the labor force was World War II, when women were recruited for defense-industry work while their men went to war. And it appears certain that a palpable shift in the structure of the American economy can be seen as due in no small part to the impact of women entering the workplace because the war effort mandated it for practical and patriotic reasons.
Initially, the pool of urban unemployed, supplemented by the first trickle of migrants, was sufficiently large to accommodate the expanded war economy. But as men went into military service, new sources of workers were needed and old prejudices had to be overcome, as President Roosevelt made clear in his Columbus Day speech in 1942: "In some communities employers to hire women. In others they are-reluctant to hire Negroes. We can no longer afford to indulge such prejudice."1
However, a study of selected mothe...