Blog # 8

Textbook: Chapter 5 (pp. 283-305)

1. What were the most significant developments in women’s wage labor in the late nineteenth century? How did they affect working-class, middle-class, and elite women.

The most significant developments in women’s wage labor in the late nineteenth century were the shift out of women workers from domestic services to manufacturing and office work. These developments in women’s wage labor affected the different class of women differently. The working-class worked in textile industries garment sweatshops. Other women who had education started working in offices. These were mostly the middle-class women. The technological development allowed them to start using typewriters. The office job paid them more than the industrial manufacture. The elite women did not have to work. Their job was mostly to take care of themselves, their beauty, and elegance.

Textbook: Chapter 6

2. What is the importance of the images on page 345 for understanding Native American women’s experience during the era of western consolidation?

I think that the importance of the following images is that it shows the lifestyle differences of Native American girls before and after Americanization. By looking at the picture on the left, I see three sad girls covered in blanket and sitting on the floor. When I look at the picture on the left, I see a totally different lifestyle. In the after picture I see the same girls but who are dressed properly, their hair looks better, they are sitting on chairs instead of on the floor, and most importantly one of them has a book (education symbol). However, what is important is that everything in these two pictures is different but the sadness in the faces of these Native American girls is the same in both of the pictures.

Textbook document ( Chapter 5 pp. 311-316) – “The Woman Who Toils,” and “The Woman Who Toils: Being the Experiences of Two Ladies as Factory Girls”

1. What different sorts of women does Bessie Van Vorst meet in the factory, and how and why do their responses to their work vary?

Bessie Van Vorst meets three different sorts of women in the factory: the bread winner, the semi-bread-winner, the women who work for luxuries. The responses of these women to their work vary because they are women of different classes. The first class of women are the girls who work in order to support their families. The second class are self-supporting women who are in competition with other women. Their response is that they work for their own pleasure. Finally, the third class of women worked for luxuries. These are the women who get support but still work in order to be able to spend more money on them and their clothes.

2. Why does Van Vorst conclude that working women are passive in accepting their working conditions and unwilling to stand up for themselves in the way of working men? Do you think she is right?

Van Vorst concludes that working women are passive in accepting their working conditions and unwilling to stand up for themselves in the way of working men because of the division of the work attitude of women competitors of different classes. The issue of wages is not fundamental. For instance, some women work to have money to survive, others work to earn money for luxuries. In contrast to women, men have one class of competitors. That is the class of bread-winner to make money to support and feed their families. She also adds about the women, “There will be no strikes among them so long as the question of wages is not equally vital to them all” (pg 315). I think that she is right. The division of the work purposes of different class of women pushes them to accept their work conditions and not to stand up for themselves. I think that this also becomes the reason of women’s low wages. Because women working for leisure don’t care about the low wages as much as the ones working to support and feed their families, so there is not unity among women to stand up and change their work conditions.