“In 1900, only 6 percent of married women worked outside the home, usually when their blue-collar husbands were unemployed. Among wives with children at home, very few worked at all. Almost half of single women held jobs, but they usually stopped working when they married or, at the latest, when they got pregnant, and most never worked for pay again. About a third of widowed and divorced women worked, typically out of economic necessity. Never-married women with children were virtually unknown.”
“In 1900, three out of four working women were engaged in domestic service, farming, or factory work, particularly in the nation’s textile mills and shoe factories. A third of working women were domestic servants. Teaching and nursing were the only professions generally open to women; female managers and officials were rare.”
The First Measured Century – PBS
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image: Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies
