The 1940’s were difficult and fearful times. In 1941, Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was attacked by the Japanese and American men by the thousands and eventually millions either joined the military or were drafted to serve. During that time frame all manner of businesses, but especially war and defense industries were replacing male workers with females. Someone had to build the ships and planes and all the other manufacturing needs. . .and there were only women, for the most part, to do that.
The conventional wisdom of that time was women’s work was only valued at what the norm or median of women’s earnings in the market place was. FDR and the National War Labor Board urged businesses to pay women in their new positions in industry an equal amount to what a man would earn doing the same work. Urged but did not regulate or require it. Oddly, businesses did not comply. Not only did they ignore the “voluntary” pay scale equality, they sent women packing at the wars end. These were, after all, men’s jobs.
In the help wanted columns of the newspapers until the mid 1960’s there were “help wanted-Male” and “help wanted -Female” columns in the newspaper. Our society knew very well what jobs were men’s jobs and what jobs were women’s. It was not until 1963 that JFK signed the equal pay act that became law in April 1964. Never to be deterred, businesses gave men and women different job titles for the same work so that men could be paid at a higher rate in spite of the law. The reasons given: Men just won’t work for such low wages.
It took two landmark court cases to expand the law to cover such deceptive and unfair practices in 1971. Schultz v Wheaton, in the 3rd District Court, and Cornning v Brennan in the US Supreme Court, now made it illegal to change the titles of jobs for the purpose of paying men more, and further defined that work did not actually have to be exactly the same but primarily similar in scope and skills required. At this point women were making 59% of what men made for similar work and skill levels.
We have come a long way. . .maybe. In 2002 we have women at 74% of men’s wages. A gain of a half a penny a year from the 1964 Equal Pay act. My! What progress.
My purpose was not so much to talk about wages as it is to talk about opportunities. Yet it seemed important to lay some of this conventional wisdom ground work. It was the opportunities that outraged me as a young woman, or rather the lack of them. There were all manner of on the job training for entry level management positions at good salaries for men. There were none for women. I speak from my experience of living in Salt Lake City during the 1950’s and 60’s. It may very well have been somewhat different in larger metropolitan areas, or not. When I read the want ads in the newspaper, and I always read the want ads, I would look longingly at the job opportunities for men verses the ones for women. If you were a woman you better resign yourself to an entry position of file clerk, unless you had very good typing skills and then you could be a typist and hope to aspire to secretary if you could take dictation. If you had a degree in accounting, you could become a bookkeeper. . .no not an accountant. . .a bookkeeper. You could strive to eventually become the “head bookkeeper.” If you were neither an accountant or a skilled typist, there was always waitress, motel maid, cleaning woman, bakery assistant, store clerk, domestic help, nursing home aid, nurses aid, or nanny.
Being the rebellious soul that I was, I would call on the men’s jobs and be told it was only for a man. I would ask for the details of the job in order to rebut their claims it could only be held by a man. I would tell them I could do each and everything required and was willing to. They would tell me that even though that might be the case, I would only get married and have a baby and the company would lose all they had invested in me in training. I told them I was not going to get married and have babies. They told me that would change, and they just couldn’t hire a woman for such a demanding job any way. And besides, women have that “monthly problem” and that just wasn’t acceptable in a serious work environment. Yes, I was actually told such insulting and infuriating things.
Surely it would be different at University. You could pick any career you wanted and get your degree and tell them all to go to hell. In the early 1960’s that was not the case. You could not pick any career you wanted. And even if you managed to get accepted into that major curriculum, and managed to survive the openly hostile environment of fellow students and professors, you had to fight your way through the corporate hiring practices after graduation. If you were able to be hired in spite of enormous odds against it, you had the rest of your life to fight tooth and nail for any and all advancement and just ordinary acceptance in a hostile work environment. Your fellow employees resented you. Your boss really resented you, after all you were taking away a job from some deserving man who had or would someday have a family to support. Ask Sandra Day O’Connor. She was offered a secretarial job after receiving her Law Degree. Did some determined women make it through the barriers? Yeah, they did. Did they still have to battle all the battles everyday of their working lives? Yeah, they did.
There is a lot more to relate to you about the blatant and hostile discrimination I and my sisters in the work force and society in general were subjected to. So look for subsequent pieces on these issues.
I hope the youngsters out there will come to see in a very real way that the opportunities that they have for the moment were really hard fought, and passing laws did not necessarily mean changes came easily if at all. That is why we long in the tooth older women are overly concerned with what our current administration is doing and plan to continue to do to women and their opportunities in our society. Fueled by the rantings of the religious fanatics, their intentions are clear. And those of us who remember how it used to be are sounding our voices of alarm.
