Friday, February 28, 2014

Women in the Workforce (Colonial - Present) - Linnea Hoops


Linnea Hoops
February Blog
19H

Women have always been the underdog in America in anything since the colonial era especially in the workforce.

In the colonial era it was unheard of for a woman to do anything having to do with paid labor.  All women were under the control of their husband and were in charge of cooking, cleaning and raising the children. I personally don’t think I could live in a time period like this. I think it’s wrong how women had no choice but to submit to a man to have a good life.

Once the Victorian era came around women started working a little bit more, but nothing significant. The most popular job was prostitution and any women that wanted a little bit of respect they stayed far away from that path.

The woman that stands out the most to me from this era is Clelia Duel Mosher. Mosher was born to what I believe the wrong era. She was a lonely woman that wanted to prosper in the medical field as a gynecologist. Being a woman, men objected to working with her and disabled her from becoming successful. She surveyed all kinds of different women and discovered that women secretly did in fact enjoy sex and had sexually desires 1. I believe that if Mosher was born into a different era she would have made extraordinary success to uncovering the mysteries behind the female and their genitalia, but instead she kept everything she discovered a secret and was very lonely.



After the Victorian era more women were required to go to work and help support their family more than ever.  Even though they were underpaid and not treated the same it was still a job that helped them support their families. They worked in factories and mills in poor work conditions 2.

Just recently women have started to be more competitive in the workforce. Women have taken steps towards independence and engaged in jobs like photographers, writers, office positions and even jobs in the government.

Even though women do not have equality in the workforce they are getting closer. I think that this is awesome. It has taken some strong dedicated women to change this and I cannot wait to establish myself in the workforce and contribute to the hard work that past women have done for me to have some sort of equality in my future career.




1 https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=29954



2 http://www.enotes.com/topics/feminism/critical-essays/women-early-mid-20th-century-1900-1960

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