WOMEN IN THE GREAT DEPRESSIONDuring the Great Depression each state suffered their own issues with

employment and welfare for the people. Florida was “especially ill prepared to handle an event of this magnitude.” The government, even with the New Deal, struggled to help the people and very few private charities could handle the demand of needs in Florida. In response to the devastating experiences, people took up writing to the governments to try and plead their case. Women were among those that pleaded for help and relief. The letters portray that the problems they had were “different than those of men.” They were more vulnerable because “they had fewer opportunities for employment. Jobs, when they could be obtained, paid less than what men could earn.” Unable to break the barrier to a larger workforce, women struggled to come to grips with their positions that seemed so immovable.

The women during the Great Depression tried to get any job they could. Yet one of the barriers in getting jobs was the supply and demand of employment. Obviously many women needed jobs and they were very few to go around in the Great Depression. One job that many of these women throughout the years in Florida sought after were teaching positions. Here was a job that women were allowed and expected to work at regardless of Depression times. For example, there was a picture in the book that shows women teachers in the Civilian Conservation Corps. However, all teaching jobs were very difficult to come by. For example, Mrs. Tilla Silcox in Jacksonville explained that she was an “experienced teacher…having taught (10) years in school in this State” of Florida. She is confused as to why the “old experienced teachers (especially mothers) are not better qualified…than young high school girls which they seem to prefer.” Mrs. Silcox demonstrates how jobs were scarce to come by for even educated women. Which makes Miss Wilhemena Hernandez’s plea even more pitiful. Miss Hernandez was a student at the Bethune Cookman College at Daytona Beach in Florida but “left with one year more before [she was] efficient to start to work.” She blames the depression on having “robbed [her] of the privilege of completing the Jr. college course and of acquiring a B.S. degree.” She wanted to be able to finish to be an elementary school teacher but was unable to finish even some experience. However, as Mrs. Silcox could explain the aid she begged for would not definitely help her find a job. Another woman, Mrs. Edith H. Frazier, highlighted another side of the supply and demand employment issue. She wrote explaining how many couples were “100% employed while others were starving no hope to divide the jobs.” She saw corruption and family favors running rampant over the city. Neither she nor her husband was employed and she expressed annoyance that “the wife of the city clerk teaches in the high school [thus the] family 100% employed.” She believed that if the jobs were “divided among needy families” it would help the situation of job shortage. Women were forced to the wayside as people with “needier needs” than theirs were given jobs, even if the people with these needs was the city clerk’s wife.

Many claim that the New Deal, Roosevelt’s Alphabet Soup, would create jobs that would revolutionize the country with employment. However, the women in Florida demonstrate a very different case. When the W.P.A. set up jobs, mostly sewing, many women went to work for them to bring in any income they could. However, the New Deal soon failed them and they were laid off. Mrs. Lois Bryrd

Godwin wrote, “75 women were laid off on our project…and [she] was one of them.” Her children were going hungry, her husband was a drunkard and she couldn’t get a job because she had “married again.” Mrs. Frances Bell follows in the book with her letter explaining that although she was working in the “sewing room 11 months” she was laid off and “no one of [her] age can get a job other than W.P.A.” Stuck without any support from a husband, brother, or family member Mrs. Bell was forced to beg for anything to help her. The federal jobs surprisingly dried up, causing major setbacks in many people’s lives. This happened over and over again to these women. They found short-term jobs for the government with the W.P.A. only to find it gone with the rest of the jobs. Aptly named, Looking for the New Deal, the book highlights how not even the federal government could help these women break workforce barriers to find a job.

As I read through the book my heart broke for each of these women. Majority of them were widows who had nowhere else to turn for help. They wanted jobs and were equipped to handle these jobs, but not even the New Deal could help them. In almost every letter I read they explained their dire circumstances and how they believed the people they were writing could help them. It is evident of how the workforce changed in the 1930s. Barriers were thrown up to women who struggled to move past them to provide for their families. Nevertheless, with the high volume of workers, employment was shorthanded in a way that not even the precious New Deal could provide long-term jobs for women. With no where else to turn, they wrote over and over again to the government seeking aid, only to find very empty letters coming back stating that “no jobs” were available.

Source:Green, Elna C., ed. Looking for the New Deal: Florida Women’s Letters during the Great Depression. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2007.

Image:“Woman of the High Plains, Texas Panhandle.” In The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, by Dorthea Lange. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1938.