Great Depression Case

For many decades, the labour force has consisted of more men than women. However, since the Great Depression, women started to enter the male dominated labour force. The notion of female breadwinners began during this time when the majority of job losses were held by men. In the 1930's, women's roles at home and society were gradually changing. During the Great Depression, women began to obtain new responsibilities as breadwinners, and were now accountable for a greater percentage of the household income. However, along with new responsibilities, women were also facing discrimination in the labour force. In the article, "In case you hadn't noticed!": Race, Ethnicity, and Women's Wage-Earning in a Depression-Era City, Srigley says that gender is a key factor of prejudice against women. Furthermore, other factors such as race and marital status were also taken into consideration when employing women. To prove her arguments, Srigley uses interviews with women who were working during the Great Depression. Although women were facing discrimination, they still managed to create "a legitimate space for female breadwinners when male employment was especially high in the labour market of the 1930s."

Alice Kessler-Harris is fairly accurate that women were seen as breadwinners during the economic depression. During the Great Depression, jobs were becoming scarce or being eliminated especially for men, which is why women had to seek employment to support their families. The Depression had hit the male dominated industries the hardest. As men were being laid off, their wives would be given the responsibilities of maintaining the household on a low income. Consequently, women became more economically significant. Moreover, families became more dependent on the wife's wages. However, it was extremely difficult for women to obtain work in the sex segregated labour force. With high unemployment rates and sexual discrimination during the Great Depression, women still managed to make it through housekeeping and survival entrepreneurship. Although women were forced to work because of the desperate economic circumstances in the family, they still generally had a more flexible attitude towards working than men and were also willing to work more cheaply. Even though a sex-segregated job market provided limited protection for women and helped some of them to become the breadwinners of their family, it also helped to confine them in low-paying, low-status jobs.

While looking for work, some women were able to find well paying jobs whereas others were still discriminated. As mentioned earlier, race was a main factor in determining which females obtained a job. Although women had a higher employment rate than men, they were still discriminated due to many reasons. For example, white women were able to find jobs such as nurses, teachers and clerks. Additionally, women with clerical jobs were