Changing Attitudes Towards Women’s Labor: How Newspapers Reflect Popular Ideologies
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Using textual analysis programs like Voyant, which are meant to analyze literature, for the analysis of newspapers made it difficult to demonstrate full pictures of the information that I saw in these articles, and hoped to convey on this site. To be able to use Voyant, we ended up categorizing the data I had collected into pre-ww1, ww1, inter-war period between ww1 and ww2, ww2, and post ww2, I merged the files that were categorized in each period into one file to make it easier to process in Voyant, which were filed as a periodized data set. Both world wars dramatically changed the workforce and a lot of my preliminary research was surrounding the wars which were reasons we used these categories, and because there were fewer articles beginning available starting around the mid-1920s. These articles were accessed from the Historic Oregon Newspapers site, which is available through the University of Oregon, using the keywords ‘women’ and ‘labor’.
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- How did the way that women were talked about change?
- How did the necessity for women’s labor vary during both wars?
- How about the discussion of wages, hours, and working conditions?
- How about women’s participation in unions?
- Conclusion
How did the way that women were talked about change?
Usage of Girls vs. Women
One of the ways that I tracked the way that women were talked about, was by examining the usage of ‘girls’ as a term when being used to discuss adult women. While this term isn’t offensive, when adult women are referred to as ‘girls’ it’s often meant in a condescending way and is meant to undermine the intelligence, experience, and maturity that women have. The articles I processed revealed that the usage of ‘girl’ or ‘girls’ in reference to adult women peaked during the interwar period, and after closer examination, revealed that this was most commonly used at the end of 1918, after the end of ww1.
Overall trends:
Usage during interwar:
Contexts in 1918-19:
I decided to include some of the contexts of the usage of these articles, and because around the end of WW1 was when it occurred most frequently, I included some that occurred a few months before the end of the war, those after the end of the war where usage peaked, and one a few months after the end of the war.
I think five of these articles use girl* when referring to actual girls, as they say ‘women and girls’ or ‘boys and girls’, meaning that the 14 other uses, most of which are in reference to factory workers or workers of some kind, are referring to women.
Contexts in Post WW2 Period:
Here, we can see that the usage of ‘girl’ or ‘girls’ during the postwar period, was only used in reference to actual girls, instead of grown women. Although there were fewer texts from this period to analyze, the lack of usage in the articles I did have has significance; in the image included for contexts in 1918-19, girl* referred to actual girls about 26% of the time, and in the postwar period, although used with much less frequency, referred to actual girls 100% of the time.
What Does It Mean?
I previously discussed how ‘girl’ or ‘girls’ are meant or perceived when used in reference to adult women, and while the changes in usage are interesting, I think that the broad usage of this term reflects a lot about the way people felt about women’s work and women’s participation in the work that was done during the war. I think that in these contexts, the usage of girl* in relation to work done during the war was meant to undermine the difficulty and importance of the work, as well as the skills of the women doing this work. It equates this work to things that could be done by children, as if entire countries weren’t dependent on the labor of women during this period. I think it demonstrates a broader mindset of ‘women as unskilled laborers’ who are easily replaceable, as well as spot holders for men, or the ‘skilled laborers’, who were returning to their jobs, and because women had the skills of girls, there was no reason for them to take spots in the workforce away from men, or just in general.
What Was She Wearing?
While I was reading these articles, one of the things I kept noticing was the frequent mention of what the women who were doing work looked like or were wearing. To me, it felt like when they were discussing labor, especially during wars, they would talk a little about the work and then say “oh they wore…”, so I wanted to look at how frequently their outfits were actually being mentioned, or if it just felt like a lot because it was impactful.
Terms
I chose to track these different terms, compared alongside girl* which we’ve already used, to get an idea of scale in our trends graph.
Trends
So, what does this (frankly difficult to interpret graph (seriously Voyant why use such similar colors???)) mean? Wear, clothing, and uniform, all had the highest usages during WW1, skirt was used during both wars, dressed was used most frequently during the interwar period, and khaki was most frequently used during the postwar period. I don’t think necessarily that when each was used has all that much meaning, but I find it noteworthy that they were used at all and with frequency and variation. Fun fact! It doesn’t matter what a woman wears while building munitions or whether she wore a skirt while digging mines! (Shocking!!!! I know) So I think that in these papers, the fact that the clothes women wore and the way they looked while participating in labor were important enough for journalists to mention in news stories is revealing about how people felt towards women, and their participation in the workforce. It alludes to the fact that the appearance of women is just as important as the work that they are doing, if not more, and the value of women is based on appearance, and women should always put looking a certain way - even when going to work in a factory. I think this reveals the way a lot of people felt about women’s participation in the workforce because it relegates them as being just as, if not more important than their job.
How did the necessity for women’s labor vary during both wars?
Due to an urgent need for workers during both wars, there were increased discussions around women’s employment:
WW1 - Labor Trends
During WW1, the biggest industries that required women’s work were agricultural work & factory work:
WW2 - Labor Trends
Oregon was a completely different place during ww2 than it had been during ww1, due to increased industrialization, thus changing the field in which women were needed to work to reflect changing industries:
What do these trends reveal?
I think that because these trends are so clear and distinct, it emphasizes the fact that women were only needed to fill these jobs in these specific fields during these periods, and afterward, most of them had to give their jobs up to men coming back from war. Tons of women were trained in new areas, and were just as, if not more skilled than men in their fields, but outside of the wars, were not needed, or not wanted, in their respective fields.
How about the discussion of wages, hours, and working conditions?
Although the graph is a little hard to read, the mentions of wages increased during ww1 and ww2, while the mentions of hours and conditions both decreased during the wars. In the papers I looked at, they talked a ton about the necessity of increased wages during the wars to convince women to work in the fields that men were abandoning (industrial work, farms, factories, etc.). The mentions of the time one had to work and the conditions one worked under decreased. It was ‘patriotic’ for women to join the workforce to support the country, but during times of war, the conditions under which women in the US were working wasn’t a huge topic.
They were definitely discussing all of these different things outside the context of war which is really important; fair wages, limitations on hours, and safe conditions have been in discussion in the US for a very long time, as we can see from this graph, and women were at least a topic of discussion. In these articles, outside of wartime, the wages of women were discussed as being less than men’s, and the wages of black women as being less than those of white women. It’s really important that the wages of black women were discussed, especially as being discriminatory, during the interwar period. Mentions of conditions were often next to ‘unsanitary’ or ‘unsafe’, some mentioned that women shouldn’t have to deal with these same issues as men, but the majority discussed workplace conditions as a whole. Lastly, discussions of working hours were often in relation to the eight hour work day for women workers, which had split responses; some didn’t want to hire women as they needed employees to work longer than eight-hour shifts, some felt women should choose whether they worked longer than eight hours or not, and some were happy as it was beneficial to help prevent labor exploitation.
How about women’s participation in unions?
During WW2, the mention of unions in relation to women’s labor drops to none. In Portland during the war, women were doing a bunch of industrial work and were joining unions, but many didn’t want to take women in because they knew they’d want to let them go at the end of the war. Many unions, employers, and women alike knew that once the war was over they would have to leave the industrial jobs that they were working during the war because those were ‘jobs for men’. While more and more women were entering the workforce, there was still tons of separation between the jobs men did and the jobs women did. Attitudes were changing somewhat, but many still believed that the main role of women was in the home, and the role of women was absolutely not in industrial work (outside of wartime). There were fewer newspapers from ww2 in the collection I examined, thus there were smaller chances for unions to be mentioned, but the lack of discussion around unions during this period wasn’t a coincidence.
Conclusion
Examining this collection of newspapers revealed many things about changing attitudes toward’s women’s labor, and while some were more straightforward with different changes, other changes were revealed through things that were less noticeable, like the language used to talk about women’s labor. A lot of things surrounding labor, including what labor is necessary during a specific period in time, fluctuate a lot, especially in relation to things like world wars. I think that I was able to demonstrate some of these changes in this project, like trends based on fields that required the work of women, as well as discussions surrounding wages, but I’d like for this project to be more of an example than anything. With further examinations of these texts using Voyant, I’m sure people could find a million other things that are equally important, or more so, as what I presented in this project. Thanks for reading :).