Tracey M. Wilson
After the war, women were encouraged to give their jobs back to returning service men. A U.S. Department of Labor letter sent to all employers in Connecticut stated,
It is earnestly desired that you will state your needs so that they may be supplied and the situation met to find a peace job for the woman who has had a war job. This includes stenographers, filing clerks, etc.
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Many women returned to their homes. They were still not able to compete with men for the same jobs.
The following excerpt of a letter in response to a survey by the U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau explains the tenuous position that women held in a brass and steel plant in Connecticut. It shows that women were not totally integrated into the work force, but adjuncts hired for emergency work only.
May we explain that we took on women in our plant for the war period only, and we, therefore, could not compare the production of women with the production of men, as they did not work on the same jobs. We have now entirely discontinued the war work, and have no women in our plant at all. No changes were necessary in the machinery, equipment, as we built up an entirely new department, with new machinery, equipment, etc., with the express intention of employing women on particular operations. We could have continued to employ the women had we continued on the work which we were doing during the war. We might also state that the use of women in our plant was very successful, and we most certainly would use women in the future on any similar work or on any
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work which we may take up in the future of a light character.
The movement of large numbers of women into the work force in the 2Oth century was marked by their entrance into poorly paid low status jobs. The major trend in Connecticut, as in the country, was a move out of domestic service into clerical occupations. Indeed, women made few lasting break-throughs in the labor market in the war period that were not orchestrated by the economic needs of the country.
Though the changes may have been limited, they did take place. Opportunities and work place autonomy did change for women. Propelled by the war, women shifted jobs and took advantage of jobs they had never had the chance to take before, and had never been encouraged to take. They were able to weigh and evaluate options, and thus gained power as workers. What appears in statistical terms as a modest change was for thousands of women a time of enormous personal change and adjustment. In the patriotic fervor of the war many women felt that the rhetoric of democracy and human dignity should also have meaning in their work.
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Attitudes about women did change to a limited degree. It became acceptable for single women to work. The taboo against working married women remained even though between twenty and twenty-five percent of women who worked were married. Still, women were hired at jobs which left them in a submissive role in the work place to reinforce male-female relationships in the larger world. They left the direct submissive role of domestics and entered the not-too-subtle subservient roles as clerical workers. The economic power structure, consolidated during this period, was able to keep women in dead-end jobs. As evidenced by the interviews with the workers, they were somehow able to survive, and some were strong enough to risk their jobs in a fight for more control and a desire for a better life. It is these women who laid the building blocks for the continued challenge of women today to sex stereotyping in jobs, pay, working conditions, and society.