rs and daughters by Bennett and Elder leads them to the conclusion that the Depression had as much impact on increased female employment during and after the war as the war did.2 Drastic changes in family life, notably the fathers' and husbands' loss of employment and the mothers' and wives' forced search for ways to bring money into households, caused permanent changes in the perception of women's social roles on the part of such women and their daughters. Indeed, changes in women's employment that began in the Depression influenced such changes during the war: "Eventually, half of the women defense workers were drawn from the ranks of women who were already in the work force before the war."3
According to Milkman, women's jobs were accommodated by America's postwar expansion,4 but the fact that jobs appear to have been sex-segregated in ways consistent with traditional social roles had an effect on employment patterns of the economy and social attitudes toward women's employment more generally during the Great Depression. milkman suggests that inflexibly confining women to support-staff or menial functions had the effect of allowing employers to retain their services during the economic contractions of the 1930s even though male management or manufacturing staff might have become unemployed.5 Because employment was already highly segregated by sex by the time of the Depression therefore aggravated from a social standpoint the economic impact of widespread male unemployment.6 This aspect of U.S. employment patterns had consequences for social attitudes toward women. The fact that those attitudes appear to have persisted throughout the 1930s demonstrates a depth of feeling and the quality of cultural entrenchment. The most striking feature of such feelings is evident in the notable hostility in American society toward women--especially white married women- who worked outside the home.
Indeed, on the very eve of World War I...