Here is a paper I wrote about women in the Great Depression. It's important how each group in society was affected by the Great Depression.

1. WOMEN IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION
During the Great Depression each state suffered their own issues with
employment and welfare for the people. Florida was “especially ill prepared to
handle an event of this magnitude.” The government, even with the New Deal,
struggled to help the people and very few private charities could handle the demand
of needs in Florida. In response to the devastating experiences, people took up
writing to the governments to try and plead their case. Women were among those
that pleaded for help and relief. The letters portray that the problems they had were
“different than those of men.” They were more vulnerable because “they had fewer
opportunities for employment. Jobs, when they could be obtained, paid less than
what men could earn.” Unable to break the barrier to a larger workforce, women
struggled to come to grips with their positions that seemed so immovable.
The women during the Great Depression tried to get any job they could. Yet
one of the barriers in getting jobs was the supply and demand of employment.
Obviously many women needed jobs and they were very few to go around in the
Great Depression. One job that many of these women throughout the years in
Florida sought after were teaching positions. Here was a job that women were
allowed and expected to work at regardless of Depression times. For example, there
was a picture in the book that shows women teachers in the Civilian Conservation
Corps. However, all teaching jobs were very difficult to come by. For example, Mrs.
Tilla Silcox in Jacksonville explained that she was an “experienced teacher…having
taught (10) years in school in this State” of Florida. She is confused as to why the
“old experienced teachers (especially mothers) are not better qualified…than young
high school girls which they seem to prefer.” Mrs. Silcox demonstrates how jobs
were scarce to come by for even educated women. Which makes Miss Wilhemena
Hernandez’s plea even more pitiful. Miss Hernandez was a student at the Bethune
Cookman College at Daytona Beach in Florida but “left with one year more before
[she was] efficient to start to work.” She blames the depression on having “robbed
[her] of the privilege of completing the Jr. college course and of acquiring a B.S.
degree.” She wanted to be able to finish to be an elementary school teacher but was
unable to finish even some experience. However, as Mrs. Silcox could explain the aid
she begged for would not definitely help her find a job. Another woman, Mrs. Edith
H. Frazier, highlighted another side of the supply and demand employment issue.
She wrote explaining how many couples were “100% employed while others were
starving no hope to divide the jobs.” She saw corruption and family favors running
rampant over the city. Neither she nor her husband was employed and she
expressed annoyance that “the wife of the city clerk teaches in the high school [thus
the] family 100% employed.” She believed that if the jobs were “divided among
needy families” it would help the situation of job shortage. Women were forced to
the wayside as people with “needier needs” than theirs were given jobs, even if the
people with these needs was the city clerk’s wife.
Many claim that the New Deal, Roosevelt’s Alphabet Soup, would create jobs
that would revolutionize the country with employment. However, the women in
Florida demonstrate a very different case. When the W.P.A. set up jobs, mostly
sewing, many women went to work for them to bring in any income they could.
However, the New Deal soon failed them and they were laid off. Mrs. Lois Bryrd

2. Godwin wrote, “75 women were laid off on our project…and [she] was one of them.”
Her children were going hungry, her husband was a drunkard and she couldn’t get a
job because she had “married again.” Mrs. Frances Bell follows in the book with her
letter explaining that although she was working in the “sewing room 11 months” she
was laid off and “no one of [her] age can get a job other than W.P.A.” Stuck without
any support from a husband, brother, or family member Mrs. Bell was forced to beg
for anything to help her. The federal jobs surprisingly dried up, causing major
setbacks in many people’s lives. This happened over and over again to these women.
They found short-term jobs for the government with the W.P.A. only to find it gone
with the rest of the jobs. Aptly named, Looking for the New Deal, the book highlights
how not even the federal government could help these women break workforce
barriers to find a job.
As I read through the book my heart broke for each of these women. Majority
of them were widows who had nowhere else to turn for help. They wanted jobs and
were equipped to handle these jobs, but not even the New Deal could help them. In
almost every letter I read they explained their dire circumstances and how they
believed the people they were writing could help them. It is evident of how the
workforce changed in the 1930s. Barriers were thrown up to women who struggled
to move past them to provide for their families. Nevertheless, with the high volume
of workers, employment was shorthanded in a way that not even the precious New
Deal could provide long-term jobs for women. With no where else to turn, they
wrote over and over again to the government seeking aid, only to find very empty
letters coming back stating that “no jobs” were available.
Source:
Green, Elna C., ed. Looking for the New Deal: Florida Women’s Letters during the
Great Depression. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press,
2007.
Image:
“Woman of the High Plains, Texas Panhandle.” In The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA
Highlights, by Dorthea Lange. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1938.