Women
About 15% of the household heads on relief were women. Youth programs were operated separately by the National Youth Administration (the NYA). The average worker was about 40 years old (about the same as the average family head on relief).
The WPA was consistent with the strong belief of the time that husbands and wives should not both be working (because the second person working would take one job away from a breadwinner). A study of 2,000 female workers in Philadelphia showed that 90% were married, but wives were reported as living with their husbands in only 18 percent of the cases. Only 2 percent of the husbands had private employment. "All of these women," it was reported, "were responsible for from one to five additional people in the household."
In rural Missouri 60% of the WPA-employed women were without husbands (12% were single; 25% widowed; and 23% divorced, separated or deserted). Thus, only 40% were married and living with their husbands, but 59% of the husbands were permanently disabled, 17% were temporarily disabled, 13% were too old to work, and the remaining 10% were either unemployed or handicapped. An average five years had elapsed since the husband's last employment at his regular occupation. Most of the women worked with sewing projects, where they were taught to use sewing machines and made clothing, bedding, and supplies for hospitals, orphanages, and adoption centers.
Read more about this topic: Works Progress Administration
Famous quotes containing the word women:
“Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood—the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done “for the sake of the children” justified, even ennobled the mother’s role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned—the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“In the adjustment of the new order of things, we women demand an equal voice; we shall accept nothing less.”
—Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947)
“For women who do not love us, as for the “disappeared”, knowing that we no longer have any hope does not prevent us form continuing to wait. We live on our guard, on watch; women whose son has gone asea on a dangerous exploration imagine at any minute, although it has long been certain that he has perished, that he will enter, miraculously saved, and healthy.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)