Women During The Great Depression

The Great Depression was a demanding and difficult period of time that lasted ten years, from 1929 to 1939, due to the crash of the stock market. This resulted in the struggle to look for jobs, economic and social strains, and a heavy demand on families. Urban areas were crowded with hungry, poor citizens. While almost everyone living in the US was affected by the Depression, different groups of people had it much worse. Men were often given jobs first, therefore ultimately treated better. Minorities, such as African Americans and Mexican Americans, were hardly treated as citizens and were forced to face appalling working conditions and discrimination. There was also a bias against women. Women during the Great Depression endured a difficult …show more content…
Unemployment was a problem for men and women alike. However, it proved to be more laborious for a woman to go out and find a job. This was mainly because of the perspective most had at the time that a woman’s role is to stay behind and fend for her children while the man, the head of the household, went out to find a job. Women only made up 25% of the entire workforce. Union forces were not ready to accept working women, which caused women to suffer even more during this already difficult time. According to Women on the Breadlines, an essay by Meridel Le Sueur describing the plight of women during the Great Depression, women stayed in employment bureaus for hours each day. The author writes, “So we sit hour after hour, day after day, waiting for a job to come in. There are many women looking for a single job” (Sueur). More times than not women would wait months for a job, and even then their earnings were very …show more content…
The way they were treated during this decade was not always ethical or moral. The stories of each woman in Woman on the Breadlines run along the same idea. They all sympathize with each other for their struggles and the immense strain put on them. The typical mindset of the gender roles was often biased against women. Sueur writes, “There are not many women in the bread line. There are no flop houses for women as there are for men… Yet there must be as many women out of jobs in cities and suffering extreme poverty as there are men. What happens to them?” (Sueur). Sueur asks a very important question here. Men and women are both facing challenging conditions. Both are able to work, yet women are still discriminated against. They are left to endure inequality and harassment. Some women end up selling their bodies in order to make a simple living, because to society they aren’t worth