Working Women and Marriage
March is Women’s History Month. NY1920s always centers women’s history; this month we’ll do so a bit more emphatically.
One hundred years ago today … NYC papers debated, explicitly and implicitly, whether women were better off working or getting married, and reported on the many who were–surprise!–doing both.
The Evening World columnist Marguerite Mooers Marshall (a budding novelist whose column has appeared on this site before) published an ironic response to Foundations of Feminism, a new book that argued that the cause of women liberation would be better served were women to marry, bear children, and act as homemakers than if they entered the workforce.
Evening World, 28 March, 1921, p. 17. Newspapers.com.
Alongside Marshall’s piece, the World included a short feature on Henrietta R.H. Reid, “who was reputed to be the highest paid woman on Wall Street.”
Evening World, 18 March, 1921, p. 14. Newspapers.com.
Ten days earlier, the paper printed the results of its study of marriages registered so far in 1921 finding that “56% of Brides have Business Occupation and 61% are 25 or Under.”
The report noted that marriage could be seen as an economic choice, that it was “relieving the housing shortage.”
Daily News, 18 March, 1921, p. 5. Newspapers.com.
And speaking of Wall Street and thrift: Brooklyn department store Abraham, Strauss & Company (which we featured here) was trying to appeal to women working in the business world, enticing them to shop for clothes on their lunch break. Their advertisement explained that “Miss Wall Street” would get on the subway, go three stops to Hoyt Street, and enter the store right from the subway platform–“5 minutes from Wall and William.”
On a more portentous note, the March 28 Times was reporting that the National Women's Trade Union League would hold a convention in June, right before the annual American Federation of Labor convention to discuss, the “critical economic situation now faced by the workers, especially the women workers. because of the enforced inequality of women.” (“Women Workers To Meet. National Trade Union League Convention Called For June 6.” New York Times 28 March, 1921, p. 10. )
– Jonathan Goldman, March 28, 2021
TAGS: women, labor history, jobs, marriage, housing, shopping, advertising, Wall Street, fashion