View source for 328--Week 5 Questions/Comments

== Harriet Brunkhurst's article ==
 
In Harriet Brunkhurst's article I found it sad to read how the mother of working women expected so much more of their working daughters than of their working sons. Not only was being looked down upon for being in the same level as men bad enoough, but they were expected to cook, clean and do other odd end things around the house after a tiresome day at work, while the sons did nothing but relax after a tiresome day at work. The part that most hit me was Cecil's story. Her mother has her work and wants to hear nothing about how Cecil is tired from work yet she has the nerver to say "John is so tired when he returns from work" about her husband!!! -Emely Amaya

I also found it interesting to read Harriet Brunkhurst’s article in Major Problems in American Women’s History. It was sad that the women were not as respected as men for holding full time business jobs. However, I think it was largely to do with the context of the time. Mothers couldn’t empathize with their daughters because they expected them to play the same role in the household that they had once held. They knew that their daughters were the main providers, but the idea of this was out of line with the traditional norms and expectations of society at the time. This conflict created a double standard for the working girls, conforming to both the expectations one would hold for the head of the house as well as the expectations for the woman of the house, with fewer of the benefits of each. --Jessica Kilday

The other thing that stuck out to me about Harriet Brunkhurst's piece was the bit about housework being so much more tiresome than paid jobs were at the time.  It kind of brings up that little dig that with the sphere of domesticity, women were expected to work around the house and were no longer considered real "breadwinners" because their jobs were innate.  It seems almost as if the mothers were upset their daughters could go out and make money for "shorter workdays" while they were stuck at home taking care of the household and making sure the family was comfortable when they returned home, finding their family ungrateful for all they do.  -- Kelly Wuyscik  

In Harriet Brunkhurst's article entitled "Business Girls," she identifies how a mother and daughter struggle in their relationship.  Despite the daughter's role as the breadwinner, the mother, who is a homemaker, inflicts her judgment of her daughter's behavior within the confines of the home.  The mother "would yield without question to husband or son occupying the same position, debates Rose's every movement simply because she is a girl."(266) We read about suppression of race and gender, but the suppression from within the structure of a girl's life can dictate a life of inadequacy.  Our socialization and placement in the world is influenced by school, government, friends and most importantly family.  The family instills values and beliefs and is the most enduring agent in the life of a child. If this type of suppression exists within the family, what can be expected of a child as an adult?--LisaM 

I think Lisa makes a good point about what can be expected of a child as an adult.  I know my mother struggles with having her mom live with her right now.  My grandma was raised that women stay home, do housework, raise children, and have a 'man' provide for them.  Every day mom comes home tired and wore out (its been stressful at work lately) and my grandmother gets on her case about laundry, dishes, vacuming, and the like the moment she walks in, but says nothing to my father who helps my mom out with housework all the time.  She fights with mom but when dad says something she shuts up and leaves mom alone.  Its almost like I watch and live in this time setting because she also does it to me when I'm visiting my parents --Ashley Wilkins

In continuation of the discussion on Harriet Brunkhurst's article, I feel that the constrictions of women's lives from within the family can still be seen today. Although less explicitly obvious I still feel that the expectations to adhere to domestic sphere are very strong. There is still an understanding in our culture that a woman is in charge of the home. Today, when a male takes on domestic chores he is not necessarily seen as less male, but when a female does not keep a clean room or home she is blamed and suffers the burden of conforming to the domestic ideals still implicit. I don't think that women have yet been freed from the guilt of not following the social norm. Unfortunately, as Brunkhurst's article demonstrates, for the most part it is the female relatives placing the burden upon young women. -- Meredith Bojarski



== Comparisons ==


It is interesting to compare Modern American Women: “The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service” with how Fannie Williams describes the “Problem of Employment for Negro Women in Major Problems. Both of these sources describe working conditions for African American women. The first source discusses the role of the “nurse” in the household. The nurse however is responsible for much more than caring for the health of children and family, she is asked to carry out household tasks as well. It is almost as if slavery is continued by the need and difficulty of African American women to find work. The second source points out specifically that, African American women are more commonly employed to domestic service. She seems to take a different spin out however by suggesting that if you can’t be employed to a more honorable position, then make the position you can work more honorable. The question then becomes, what makes a position honorable? And how can you elevate a position if you have no control over the pay, benefits, or job description?  --Jessica Kilday

How was sexual harassment handled during the early 20th century?  I mean there are accounts of needing witnesses and having detectives, but it all seems a bit informal. --Justin Mattos

Like Justin, I am curious how sexual harassment was handled.  It seemed that many males got away with sexual harassing females because the females did not want to lose their job.  Did this occur often?  Did many of the harassers get dealt with? --Ashley Wilkins

The readings in MP and MAW both discuss how difficult the lives of working women were, for every type of women.  The immagrants were over worked and underpaid as well as black women, but they had to fight even harder to find a job, and then there were the white women who worked in department stores who ended up selling themselves to make ends meet.  What was interesting about the department store essay was how none of the women referred to what they did after hours as prostiting.  I assume this is because they were possibly ashamed of what they were doing and trying to make it sound like something its not.  It was more than just going out to the theatre or dinner.  Also surprisingly enough these girls were very young as well as the men they were intertaining seemed to be married most of the time.  This was easy money for them which seemed to be why it was so appealing.
--Michelle Mardeusz

I found Fannie Barrier Williams thoughts on the “problem of Employments for Negro Women” to be particularly interesting because rather then focusing on domestic servitude as wearing women down (all the essays in MAW did), she actually thought that it ALSO created girls with “more than ordinary strength of character.” She evens calls upon black women to raise the status of servant women. It is like she encourages women to take this job and then actively work to elevate the status of the occupation. However, it seems to focus a lot on the job as other people in society view it…. which is a very middle class America concern. – Cat Debelius

== Judy Yung, “Unbound Feet: Chinese Women in the Public Sphere" ==


I was amazed by the large role that the YWCA played in the liberation of Chinese women.  From what I read, I think that they were more liberated than white women. --Justin Mattos

Like Justin I was surprised how the YWCA played such an important role.  These women were isolated and this organization pulled them from their closets.  It is amazing how customs shaped the Chinese woman's life experience.  In "Unbound Feet" it states, "it was considered immodest to be seen too many times during the year."(263) Chinese women were made invisible by their culture. The idea of seeing a friend only on a special occasion, which was not due to distance, or the need to travel in a closed coach for short distances is suffocating.   The YWCA recognized this and offered an opportunity that allowed women of similar backgrounds to meet and receive assistance outside their homes, but the most important contribution the YWCA gave these women was power.  The power to meet, to decide and to change their lives in a way that they could now participate in it.--LisaM

I find it kind of interesting how the political events taking place in China had a big effect on the way Chinese people in Ameica lived. I admire how the women in Chinese in America helped the Revoultionary cause back in the homeland and helped liberize the women both here in America and in China by allowing them to unbind their feet, go out in public and learn to read and be educated and become independent from men.- Emely Amaya

I found it intriguiing while reading Judy Yung's essay in Unequal Sisters that the protestant church was the first to encourage chinese women and that the Chinese women's involvement with church activities helped to expand their gender roles.  I knew foot binding has ended, but its always nice to read about something that ended that I felt was cruel.  I also found it interesting that to support the revolution, women in China did various activities such as enlisting in the army and engaging in dangerous uncover work.  --Ashley Wilkins

"Unbound Feet" doesn't go in depth on the foot binding issue.  Based upon what I have read the process of foot binding was painful and and caused physical problems later in life, but what struck me was that there was a stigma attached to it.  Foot binding made a woman more desirable, which makes them marriage worthy.  I read one account where a potential mother-in-law checked the feet of the potential bride.  If she had not been foot bound, the marriage was not approved by the family.  Mothers performed this painful procedure, which began around the age of 4, on their daughters.  Can you imagine putting a child in pain to conform to the norms within the culture.--LisaM

I agree with Lisa, I can't imagine putting a child that young through that much pain only to conform to the norms of the culture! It's interesting that the women, who know the pain that the foot binding causes, were the ones to bind the feet of the young girls. I think that it just shows how much women get caught up in the gender roles and norms of a given culture. --Katie Nelson


In Judy Yung's essay she says that black and Chinese women modeled their clubs after the white womens, but they formed these clubs because they were not allowed in the white womens, so why model it after them because after all each had different motives?  This also brings me to another question which I'm not sure even deals with this just yet during this time, but the question of segregation.  Everything was segregated into black and white like schools, theatres, and restrooms, so where does that leave people like the Chinese?
--Michelle Mardeusz

In response to Michelle, I think the reason they modeled their clubs after the white women because they wanted to be accepted into that culture.  Even though they had different motives they wanted acceptance as well.  -- Kellye Sorber

I was impressed by the amount Chinese women were in the public sphere.  I feel that if they had a larger population and an earlier start they could have surpassed the efforts of white women.  I was surprised that the church was one of the main organizations that helped these women enter the public sphere.  I would have thought that the church would have tried to keep women in traditional roles. -- Kellye Sorber

I was also surprised by the role that the church played in bringing the Chinese women into the public sphere. Although, I think that the church's main effort may have been to simply Americanize the Chinese women, and maybe they realized that they had to get them out of the house in order to do that. In that sense, maybe bringing them into the public sphere and beginning to change the gender norms was an afterthought rather than the primary motivation. --Katie Nelson

It seems as if the Chinese women first had to break through their own incredibly repressive culture, only to enter into what is a comparibly better but still repressive American Culture. Not only did these women face gender discrimination from men, racial discrimination from the other ethnic groups, but they were discriminated against in amazingly archaic ways by their own people (foot-binding,not leaving the home save for once a year, etc.). Despite the prejudices imposed on the Chinese by Americans, the lifting of their own cultural restraints after the Chinese revolution must have been a wonderful and exciting experience for the women. --Landon Davis

In the chapter “Unbound Feet: Chinese Women in the Public Sphere,” Chinese women had different views on why they should create clubs. The values they wanted to help in their clubs were support for education, socioeconomic mobility, and community improvement. The group of people who encouraged the Chinese women to organize the activities was the Protestant churches. Out of all the religions why did the Protestants support the Chinese women? –Ashley Scutari

 

== The Burdens of Rural Woman's Lives ==

I found it interesting to read in "The Burdens of Rural Woman's Lives" that the husband stayed home during the Civil War after being drafted by paying $300.  It seemed to be a parallel to more recent wars like the Vietnam War. --Justin Mattos

Kind of going off of Justin's comment, I was actually curious about the farm woman's husban in "The Burden's of Rural Woman's Lives."  Was it common for men to pay the $300 and get out of service?  Or was this something only the wealthier could get away with?  I ask this question mostly because everything I've learned about the Civil War indicated that there were soldiers needed on the battlefields and by reading about this family, they didn't seem like they had all that much money.  -- Kelly Wuyscik

I also found interesting in "the burden of rural womens lives" the fact that this womoan not only never complained, but almost was bragging at points about how hard her work was but how easily she seemed to accomplish it. She talked about how many articles she was able to read while churning butter, the record amounts of wood or other goods she would stack and produce, and how at 58 she could easily walk a mile as fast as anyone else. She never complained even when mentioning that only 5 of her 8 children were still alive. Her son was attending Cornell, but she seemed most proud of the fact that she has survived such a hard life. I take my hat off to her. - Landon Davis


== Buffalobird Woman's Story ==

The article I really took interest in was ''Buffalobird Woman's Story''. I know that in Native American societies women were the oweners of the land they were in charge of agricultural practices. This had been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, and the fact that the government comes in a just changes everything really bothers me. They give them all these crops to plant when they don't even eat them and a lot of the crops are left in the ground. In reality the nation was just wasting their money providing seeds and showing them new planting techniques. I find it funny that in the end the women states that her old ways are more efficient then the new ways. She even proves this by winning a prize for her corn because she grew it the way she knew. What I am so confused about is why the government had to control how they grew their crops? Why waste time even worrying about what they are growing and how? Is it really that important of an issue? -- Amanda Taub

I agree with Amanda it seems like the government came in and told the Indians how and what to grow, but didnt teach them anything past that. The article talks about how the Indians did not like the way the food tasted or how it would spoil after a while. If the government was going to take the time to show the Indians how to produce the new foods, why not teach them how to perserve the new foods, or even cook and season them, so that the food was edible. It looks like the gov't only gave the Indians half of the knowledge they needed to make the new foods work. And if the Indians were happy beofre why even change it up in the first place? - Landon Davis


== Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892 ==

''Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892''really upset me. Number one the fact that this factory employer intentionally took advantage of the fact that she was young she was taken care of. It also really bothered me when her father pointed out to her that she was being employed weekly so she couldn't get paid more. I don't understand why the father would ever be fine with something like that. She is working just as hard as him to make money so the rest of the family could come to New York. The part that upset me the most is when she talked about how on her walks home she would pretend that she was coming home to her family and a warm meal. The last line" I used to keep this up until I turned the key in the door and opened it and stood facing the dark, cold, silent room." which makes me question, why even bother going through all this? Wouldn't it be better for the family to be together? Even if things were bad at least they would have each other. -- Amanda Taub

Like Amanda, I had a hard time getting through "Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892," because it was such a depressing piece.  Listening to her little voice describe how terrible her life was and how horribly her father was about her situation just upset me a lot.  The paragraph about her imaginary family was so heart wrenching I couldn't help but want that for her.  To come home to an cold, lonely, empty house must have been terrible, especially at her age.  I could never imaging going through something like that. -- Kelly Wuyscik  





== Others ==


I was impressed by how well written some of the pieces were in the MAW reading. Obviously I am not referring to the writings to the Chicago based DEFENDER, but the two letters to the Jewish Forward, and the article "Harsh Conditions of Domestic Servitude" were both intelligent well worded essays. This points out to me the wasted potential of what must have been thousands upon thousands of women during this time period. They were reduced to factory, shopgirl, or domestic work, when they were clearly educated enough to make a real contribution to society. - Landon Davis 


I thought Agnes Nester's piece, "The Story of a Glove Maker," explained very well the way women and young girls were treated in factories.  The fact that they had clocks, not so they knew when to leave, but to calculate how much time they had lost is truly disheartening.  It was unfair of the factory owners to take advantage of them and deduct pay because their machine broke.  It just bothers me that things that were out of control were penalties to them.  Walking around waiting for the beltboy to come and fix your sewing machine should not mean you lose pay.  But I suppose that since women were considered such cheap labor and since the factory owners were skimping on that much, why should we expect them to have functioning machinery too? -- Kelly Wuyscik

I found the journal "The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service" in MAW to be an eye opener. Reading about the negro woman and her daily taks including 14-16 hours of work with nursing children not hers as one of them to be insane. She was the main caretaker of these children with restricted visitation of her own.. seriously!? What got to me was the quote "I live a treadmill life; and I see my own children onl when they happen to see me on the streets when I am out with the children, or when my children come to the 'yard' to see me." -- Rose Ferguson

I also thought the quote by Frances Willard to be incredibly true with her parallels to life and bicycles. "I always felt a strong attraction toward the bicycle, because it is the vehicle of so much harmless pleasure, and because the skill required in handling it obliges those who mount to keep clear heads and steady hands." I'm sure it was hard to keep a clear head when some of the work these women were doing wouldn't allow them to see their family. -- Rose Ferguson

I found the quote by Francis Willard as she learned to ride a bicycle to be quite meaningful as well. It was a vehicle that forced women for a brief moment to concentrate on their own thoughts rather than what their husband or children or parents needed of them. It was a moment in which a woman could prove to herself her own strength and experience a physical freedom. Quite symbolic of breaking free of many of society's constraints.-- Meredith Bojarski

In "The Story of a Glove Maker", it amazed me how hard these women worked and also how they had to pay out their own money to do their job like paying 50 cents a week for the use of power to run the machines!! That is insane. How did anyone make enough money to live on when they are charged just to use the sewing machines?~~Mary Beth Conrad

I thought it was interesting reading about the women who wrote to the Jewish Daily Forward.  The story of the young girl who lost her fiancee in the triangle shop fire. I felt so sorry for her. She was all alone in a new country and the advice she gets is "what the earth covers must be forgotten." (65) It would be hard for anyone to get over what she went through and I know it had been four years since the event but the advice still seems harsh to me.~~Mary Beth Conrad

In "The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service", I was curious about the "service pan", the essay stated that it was left over food that the cook would "dispose" of.  Was the cook dividing it up among her neighbors? How much left overs did they have? Was it just a once a week thing since the writer said she could only go home once every 2 weeks or could cooks go home more often than the nurse could?~~Mary Beth Conrad

I found it interesting in the document of “Female Perspective on the Great migration” that over 500,000 blacks left the south between 1916 and 1919, then over a million by the 1920’s. This movement was called the “push and pull aspects of migration.”  A lot of blacks pushed out of the South because there weren’t any new advancements and the pull was the new opportunities that lied ahead. With the African American women moving up to the North for work, how much did that really affect the jobs of immigrant women? Was it a huge effect or a little because immigrants usually worked for lower wage?
-Ashley Scutari