The Great Depression was the single worst economic crisis ever experienced by the United States. In President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's own words, by 1933 fully one-third of the nation's citizens were "ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished". Roosevelt's was a presidency sired in crisis and sustained in war, and the very fabric of American society could not but be fundamentally altered as these extraordinary years progressed (Heale 2001, 16). One such fundamental change pertained to the American family. The Great Depression would forever reform the ways in which women in America were perceived, utilized, and ultimately, needed. Eliciting deep wellsprings of resourcefulness and ingenuity, the Great Depression demanded that women assume a more prominent role by helping to hold aloft a faltering economy as well as the dashed hopes of a nation. Though sexism and discrimination would beleaguer their efforts, women would nonetheless emerge from this troubled period stronger, more independent, and more respected than perhaps they had ever been before in American history.
When President Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, roughly one quarter of the labor force was unemployed. Suicide rates had likewise risen by a quarter, everyday Americans were going hungry, and many families had suffered income losses of more than thirty-five percent (Heale 2001, 17). The labor force was segregated at this time, and this phenomenon both helped and harmed women workers. Because unemployment so thoroughly decimated the number of jobs for men in manufacturing, in the skilled trades, and at unskilled labor, those women involved in clerical work appeared better protected: paperwork would be necessary even when actual production was not. On the other hand, women that worked in service industries suffered incredible losses when consumers could simply no longer afford the luxury of dining out, or staying in a hotel, or having laundry done. It w...