My 8th Grader is researching and writing a thesis paper on Women in the Workforce. She is specifically looking the history of women's work in the United States from Post Civil-War to today. Right now she is looking at the specific jobs women took throughout this time, the attitudes towards women working outside of the home, the necessity and the negative and positives of women entering the workforce, and minority women in the workforce.
If you have any thoughts on this or could recommend and sources that would be appreciated.
Thank you in advance for your help.
I am a co-editor of Comstock Women:The Making of a Mining Community and much of what I would have to say about post-Civil-War employment of women comes from my work with the census and the Comstock Mining District in Nevada, but much of what I observed is likely to be echoed elsewhere.
One of the first things that struck me was that while men often had a single job - a career that defined them and provided most if not all of their income, women frequently pursued many money-making endeavors simultaneously. At the same time, women who were making money through various means often told the census enumerator that the were "keeping house," either because that's how they they thought of themselves or because they strived to realize the ideal of the time.
Mary McNair Mathews, who lived on the Comstock in the 1860s and 1870s wrote a book about her experiences (Ten Years in Nevada): she describes herself as pursuing several jobs simultaneously. She took in boarders, she taught a small private school out of her house, she operated a day care, she washed clothes, and she did needlework. Her approach to income and work was much more complex and diverse than that of her male counterparts.
I helped develop the Nevada Online Census Database, which can be used to look at various occupations. I'm not sure if it would be of use to your 8th grader, but I will attempt to walk you through the steps to use it if you believe it would be helpful. Also, I am happy to answer specific questions that I have not addressed with my general answer.
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