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Women in the Great Depression: Investigating Assumptions
by Roberta McCutcheon

Introduction

The greatest economic calamity in the history of the United States occurred in the third decade of the twentieth century. When the stock market crashed in 1929 and the economy plummeted over the next few years, the nation sunk into the most pervasive depression in American history. No one escaped the suffering that the Great Depression produced. The ranks of the suffering went well beyond those who lost everything as a direct result of the stock market crash. While millions lost their fortunes in investments on and after October of 1929, many more lost their savings when banks collapsed and their livelihood when whole industries failed and businesses closed their doors. The drought that hit the Midwest produced additional suffering. By 1932, every economic sector and every geographic region in the country was in dire condition.
Few persons escaped the disastrous effects of the depression. The hardship and suffering of unemployment, the loss of homes and farms, and the lack of institutions that could provide adequate assistance were central to the pain caused by the economic crisis. The personal cost was perhaps the greatest on the part of the population presumed to be on the margin of economic activity. Though women were often faced with the care of families without income from employment or traditional family support, the vast majority of the government’s recovery efforts were directed at bringing life to the economy and men were the primary recipients of these efforts. In this lesson, we are going consider lives of the millions of women in need. In order to understand the impact of the Great Depression on women, we are going to read accounts, look at images and evaluate programs directed toward some of those women. Finally we are going to analyze society’s expectations for women, before during and after the Great Depression.

Objectives

1. Students will use a factual understanding of the era to provide the historical setting for a more focused analysis.

2. Students will be able to create a model to be used to evaluate the historical evidence.

3. Students will be engaged in historical research and the critical analysis of factual evidence.

4. Students will be able to examine Government programs directed at relief for women.

5. Students will be engaged in historical research and the critical analysis of gender in the twentieth century.

Student Activity One: Understanding the Great Depression

Using the sites provided below, research the 1930s for the following:

a. Causes and effects of the Great Depression
b. Women and race in the Great Depression

Susan Ware’s article in this issue of History Now
/historynow/03_2009/historian4.php

Timeline of the Great Depression
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rails/timeline/index.php

History, 1930s
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/hyper_titles.cfm

Life during the 1930s
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/index.php

http://encarta.msn.com/text_761584403___8/
great_depression_in_the_united_states.html

PBS: Surviving the Dust Bowl
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleevents/pandeAMEX05.html

African Americans in 1930s
http://mtungsten.freeservers.com/

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Invisible-Women-of-the-Great-Depression&id=1888970

http://www.answers.com/topic/their-eyes-were-watching-god-novel-5

http://ualr.edu/arwomen/depression.htm

Indians in the 1930s
http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/american_indians/
utahspaiuteindiansduringthedepression.html#top

Student Activity Two: Identifying Gender Assumptions in America

Using your history textbook for research

1. Define the following terms: cult of domesticity, cult of true womanhood, separate spheres

2. Brainstorm using both the history of the 1890s and the history of the first three decades of the twentieth century to define gender expectations in the twentieth century.

Discussion: To what extent are gender expectations consistent with the lives of women in America when gender intersects with race and economic class?

Student Activity Three: A Critical Analysis of Government and Women in the Great Depression

1. Analyze WPA murals. Assign one mural to each student or to a small group of students. Using questions developed by the class, they should analyze the murals. The following questions might be included:
a. What was the purpose of the WPA?
b. Who are the artists?
c. Is there a specific audience for the murals?
d. What is the artist’s message?
e. Is the gender of the artist significant? If so, in what ways?

2. Analyzing images and accounts. Have the class consider both the images and the secondary accounts of women lives and work during the depression.

As the students look at the following sites, they should consider the ways in which the government included women in New Deal programs. In what ways did government programs created to help women, including those led by women, differ from those programs created to help men.

http://www4.uwm.edu/eti/reprints/BookReview.pdf
http://www.josephinesjournal.com/pack_horse_librarians.htm
http://student.britannica.com/elementary/art-82328/
Women-serve-soup-and-bread-to-the-unemployed-during-the
http://newdeal.feri.org/library/i11.htm
http://ualr.edu/arwomen/depression.htm
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/pic/bl_p_fera1.htm
http://mgagnon.myweb.uga.edu/students/3090/04SP3090-Thayer.htm
http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blygd14.htm

Photographs by Dorothea Lange
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/lange/index.php

Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary McCloud Bethune and Frances Perkins
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/peopleevents/pande05.html
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/history/perkins.cfm

Extension Activity

Essay: To what extent were assumptions about women’s role in society changed by the Great Depression?