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Bellwork : . Identify one way today’s society is similar to that of the 1920’s and one way it is different. The New Woman. Guided Reading Questions – Please Turn In. 1) What would the Equal Rights Amendment guarantee? What is the status of the ERA?
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Bellwork: Identify one way today’s society is similar to that of the 1920’s and one way it is different.
Guided Reading Questions – Please Turn In 1) What would the Equal Rights Amendment guarantee? What is the status of the ERA? 2) What was prohibition? What made some women support it? What groups fought in favor of prohibition? 3) What industries fought against women’s suffrage and why? 4) What role did alcohol play in the lives of women – at home and outside of the home? 5) What effect did prohibition have on society? 6) Why did Margaret Sanger think women should be able to control the number of children they had? 7) Compare and contrast the women that Margaret Sanger spoke up for with the women known as “flappers.” 8) Give an example of a woman who was a flapper and describe her lifestyle. 9) Explain the historical events that prompted a culture toward women that made the flapper lifestyle possible. 10) What do you hypothesize the lives of women were like by the early 1930’s? Please explain your thoughts.
Highlight Reading by Susan Ware • How did women experience the depression differently than men? Identify several common experiences of an average woman during this time compared to the experiences of an average man. (Yellow) • How did gender roles change during this time? (Green) • Describe how experience in the workplace differed between different groups of women. (Orange) • How did women experience the New Deal differently than men? Identify ways the US government treated men and women differently through its “relief” programs. (Underline)
Bellwork: What do you think was one non-economic, non-financial affect the Great Depression had on women?
Stock Market Crash Stock market crash of 1929 was dramatic
Agricultural Decline Agriculture was very hard hit – and this is significant in women’s history as the greatest source of female employment was in agriculture. • From end of WWI in 1919 there had been a rural depression • Dust Bowl: Serious drought in 1930s made farming even more difficult and sent many from land. Drought lasted nine years in North Dakota and seven years on Plains.
The Exodus • Families fled to California and the Far West • Young people left the farms for cities • Roosevelt’s New Deal established public works projects (WPA, CCC, TVA, etc.) to employ displaced men – but women were not included in the list of those who were considered by the federal government to be “displaced.” • Women’s work was considered to be “casual” labor
Making Do • Characteristic attitude, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." • Women practiced small economies: • buying day-old bread, • warming several dishes in oven at once to save gas, • relining coats with old blankets, • splitting sheets down middle and re-sewing to equalize wear, • cutting adult clothing down to size for children, • going to fewer movies, • renting smaller apartment or moving in with relatives.
More Work for Mother • A working class wife might find her home occupied by unemployed husband and sons while utilities shut off for nonpayment and kitchen stove only source heat for entire house. • Economic insecurityand lack of money for recreation deepened tensions within individuals and aggravated problems between them. • She then would try to do the housework around and among them while mediating the tensions of enforced crowding, boredom, and pent up frustration.
Domestic Violence • Tension of this arrangement visible in sharp rise in domestic violence reports. • As domestic violence epidemic is noted by government agencies, women’s aid societies are formed to help stem the tide. • Women are officially told that domestic violence is the result of men’s depression and women’s lack of sympathy. • Women are advised to return home and make their men feel more like men.
Declining Marriage Rates • Temporary postponements of marriage due to economic necessity often turned into permanent delays. • Elsa Ponselle: "Do you realize how many people in my generation are not married? It wasn't that we didn't have a chance. I was going with someone when the Depression hit. We probably would have gotten married. He was a commercial artist and had been doing very well... Suddenly he was laid off. It hit him like a ton of bricks. And he just disappeared."
Birthrate Declines • Increased availability of birth control played large role in eliminating unwanted fertility. • Contraceptives were available through mail, even the Sears and Roebuck catalog. • Abortion emerged as an acceptable but often illegal alternative in many places (although doctors were always legally allowed to perform). • Contraceptive manufacturing industry never felt the effects of the Depression.
Divorce • Just as it was too expensive to get married in the height of the Depression, it was also too expensive to divorce. • Nationally fell by 38%. • Some couples stuck together because times were rough, others because it was easier to get relief if the man had a family to support. • But divorce rate rose again after 1936 and passed the earlier high of the late 1920s.
Discriminatory Policies • In 1931, the American Federation of Labor adopted a position endorsing discrimination in hiring against women whose husbands earned a decent wage. • Section 213 of the Economic Recovery Act of 1932 required women to give up their federal jobs to unemployed men. • At the state level, female public employees – including teachers and nurses – were fired in order to give their jobs to men “with families to support.”
Great Depression – In Their Words • Ann Marie Low’s “Dust Bowl Diary” • Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt (1st Lady)
Exit Slip • Describe one way women adapted to the Great Depression.
