The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Beyond Suffrage, Women in the New Deal: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Holding their Own: American Women in the 1930s. Boston: Twayne, c1982.

This books can also be helpful for general background on American women during the Depression:

Hapke, Laura. Daughters Of The Great Depression: Women, Work, And Fiction In The American 1930s. Athens: University of Georgia Press, c1995.

Scharf, Lois, and Joan M. Jensen, eds. Decades Of Discontent: The Women's Movement, 1920-1940. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.

Scharf, Lois. To work and to Wed: Female Employment, Feminism, and the Great Depression. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Westin, Jeane Eddy. Making Do: How Women Survived the '30s. Chicago: Follett, c1976.

For general background on the history of women in America, take a look at my suggestions in our Women’s Suffrage issue (March 2006):

/historynow/03_2006/ask2.php

The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers project at George Washington University is a great resource for teaching materials and resources:

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/

Allida Black, the project director, has published two excellent anthologies of Mrs. Roosevelt’s writings:

Courage in a Dangerous World: the Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Columbia University Press, c1999.

Roosevelt, Eleanor. What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Pub., 1995

You can go to this book edition of selections from her famed newspaper column:

Roosevelt, Eleanor. My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's acclaimed newspaper columns, 1936-1962. Ed. by David Emblidge and Marcy Ross. New York: Da Capo Press, c2001.

Or go to the Roosevelt Papers Website for an eletronic edition for all of the columns:

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/

Be sure to look at the two volumes (so far) of Blanche Cook’s wonderful, wonderful biography:

Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt. New York, NY: Viking, 1992.

If you’re not familiar with the Lynds’ “Middletown” studies of Muncie, Indiana, you’ll find a generous selection of reprints of both:

Middletown: A Study in American Culture. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co. c1929.

and their updated:

Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts. New York: Harcourt, Grace, c 1937.

The experiences of farmwomen – especially those of the Dust Bowl – have been studied frequently. Be sure to look at my suggestions for agricultural history in resources for Anthony Badger's essay above, as well as these studies:

Jellison, Katherine. Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913-1963 . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c1993.

Low, Ann Marie. Dust Bowl Diary. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, c1984.

For the experiences of women in specific regions or in ethnic and racial groups, look at these books:

Blackwelder, Julia Kirk. Women of the Depression: Caste and Culture in San Antonio. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, c1984.

Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Stephen Burwood, eds. Women and Minorities During the Great Depression. New York: Garland, 1990.

Gray, Brenda Clegg. Black Female Domestics during the Depression in New York City, 1930-1940. New York: Garland, 1993.

Hickey, Georgina. Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, c2003.

Wolcott, Victoria W. Remaking Respectability: African American Women in interwar Detroit. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c2001.

Hoover’s attempts to deal with the opening of the Depression are discussed in:

Romasco, Albert U. The Poverty of Abundance: Hoover, the Nation, the Depression. New York, Oxford University Press, 1965.

Schwarz, Jordan A. The Interregnum of Despair: Hoover, Congress, and the Depression. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1970.

Sobel, Robert. Herbert Hoover at the Onset of the Great Depression, 1929-1930. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975.

Warren, Harris Gaylord. Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. New York, Oxford University Press, 1959.

Hoover’s memoirs are also a valuable source:

The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover. London: Hollis and Carter, 1951.

These books address the effects of Roosevelt’s social welfare programs on women and families and minorities:

Kleinberg, S. J. Widows and Orphans First: The Family Economy and Social Welfare Policy, 1880-1939. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c2006.

Mink, Gwendolyn. The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917- 1942. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Poole, Mary. The Segregated Origins of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c2006.

Women in the labor movement of the era are discussed here:

Balser, Diane. Sisterhood & Solidarity: Feminism and Labor in Modern Times. Boston: South End Press, c1987.

Cobble, Dorothy Sue. Dishing it Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c1991.

DeVault, Ileen A. United Apart: Gender and the Rise of Craft Unionism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.

Dollinger, Sol and Genora Johnson. Not Automatic: Women and the Left in the forging of the Auto Workers' Union. New York: Monthly Review Press, c2000.

Faue, Elizabeth. Community of Suffering & Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c1991.

Foner, Philip Sheldon. Women and the American Labor Movement: from World War I to the Present. New York: Free Press, c1980.

Kenneally, James J. Women and American Trade Unions. St. Albans, Vt.: Eden Press, c1978.

Kessler-Harris, Alice. In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Milkman, Ruth Milkman, ed. Women, Work, and Protest: A Century of US Women's Labor History. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1991.

Palmer, Phyllis M. Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920-1945. Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, c1989.

Ruíz, Vicki. Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, c1987.

Salmond, John A. Miss Lucy of the CIO: The Life and Times of Lucy Randolph Mason, 1882-1959. Athens: University of Georgia Press, c1988. I love this woman – she was descended from the eighteenth century statesman George Mason and was a CIO activist in the South in the 1930s when she was already in her 50s.

Wandersee, Winifred D. Women's Work and Family Values, 1920-1940. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Wertheimer, Barbara M. We Were Tthere: The Story of Working Women in America. New York: Pantheon Books, c1977.

These authors discuss the roles of minority groups in twentieth century American labor:

Barnard, John. American Vanguard: The United Auto Workers during the Reuther Years. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, c2004.

Lewis-Colman, David M. Race against liberalism: Black workers and the UAW in Detroit. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c2008.

Vargas, Zaragosa. Labor Rights are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c2005.

Here are booklength biographies of two of the women New Dealers mentioned in the essay:

Martin, George Whitney. Madam Secretary, Frances Perkins. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.

Swain, Martha H. Ellen S. Woodward: New Deal Advocate for Women. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, c1995.

Internet:

The materials I’ve recommended for our other essays on the New Deal will serve you well here. These are sites that address topics not raised elsewhere:

The Hoover Presidential Library has a few useful online resources for classroom:

http://hoover.archives.gov/education/

The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers site has a good sketch of Frances Perkins

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/perkins-frances.cfm

And Wikipedia provices a helpful entry on Molly Dewson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Dewson