Labor Within and Beyond the Workplace
UNPAID LABOR
PAID LABOR
Although women were limited in their choice of occupation, they found themselves present in a variety of occupational fields throughout the 20th century. Just as women were limited due to their gender, they were also limited based on their race. Segregation and discrimination may have been less pronounced in Middletown compared to the South but these factors still dictated what job sectors African Americans were able to occupy. The Middletown III study's long-term occupational data, presented in the two graphs above, gives insight into the types of occupations of both white and African-American women in Middletown throughout the 20th century.[7]One occupation commonly geared towards women was that of a salesperson in a department store. These positions were predominately for white, working-class women.[8] Managers, mostly men, wanted saleswomen to be appealing to the eye, polite, and have the ability to sell mechanically and inoffensively to the middle- and higher-class women who frequented the stores.[9]
The informal economy was also very present in Muncie during the industrial era. However, data surrounding the topic of sex work is hard to locate or track due to the taboo surrounding the topic during the height of its time. There are few records that give insight into the sex work that occurred in Middletown during the early 20th century but researchers have discovered local centers of prostitution. Brothels were active in the red-light districts of Middletown and were primarily made up of white women. African-American women in other cities more commonly found themselves in buffet flats, as sex work was better paid and allowed for more independence and opportunity for black women.[10]
As the Middletown III data presented above shows, domestic service was the most common occupation for African-American women in Middletown until the 1960s as it was one of the primary jobs available to them.[11] This was not a prominent occupation for white women in Middletown as business class white women would be the employers, and white working-class women were more interested in opportunities outside of the home and domestic sphere. Although there were limitations on the kinds of work women could do, white women were able to exit the domestic service industry at a faster rate due to increased opportunities for native whites to find work compared to immigrants and African Americans.
CIVIC LABOR
We think of the work women accomplish as centered in the home and in the paid labor market, while their civic efforts are often omitted or left unmentioned as a type of work. Women accomplished many things through their civic groups whether they be clubs, church groups, or other forms of civic gatherings. As women were often excluded from unions and other professional groups due to their gender, working women had to create their own social institutions as an effort to create and harbor consolidation between other working women. Civics clubs were strong in Muncie, and there are a plethora of records concerning club activities, although many of them are centered around middle-class white women.[17] There were many different civic and clubs geared towards women in Middletown through the industrial era. Two notable examples include one focusing on African-American women and one for women in professional occupations. They show some of the work that women did through civic organizations.One example, on the national level, involved African-American working women organizing through a program of the YWCA. The 1st national YWCA program for black working women sought to provide both professional and personal opportunities for these women.[18] This program brought together African American women and their anti-racist white allies in a search for labor-based equality for Black women. As the influence of the program spread, thousands of African-American women were provided with education, recreational opportunities, spaces to meet, encouragement, and allies. The development of this program led to the creation of industrial clubs for African-American women in a variety of different occupations.[19]
[1] Alice Kessler-Harris, "Women's Choices in an Expanding Labor Market," in Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 109-122.
[2] Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1929).
[3] Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts., (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937), 29.
[4] Theodore Caplow, Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change and Continuity, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 88.
[5] Caplow, Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change and Continuity, 112-113.
[6] Caplow, Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change and Continuity, 114.
[7] Work tables by different variables, 1986, Box: 46, Folder: 18. Middletown III project records, MSC-001. Middletown Studies Collection.
[8] Susan Porter Benson, “The Cinderella of Occupations: Managing the Work of Department Store Saleswomen 1900-1940.” The Business History Review 55, no.1 (Spring 1981).
[9] Benson, “The Cinderella of Occupations: Managing the Work of Department Store Saleswomen 1900-1940,” 5-6.
[10] Joe William Trotter, Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021).
[11] Luke E. Lassiter, Hurley Goodall, Elizabeth Campbell and Michelle Natasya Johnson, The Other Side of Middletown: Exploring Muncie's African American Community, (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2004).
[12] Trotter, Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America, 83.
[13] Caplow, Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change and Continuity, 100.
[14] Steven High, Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 105.
[15] Caplow, Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change and Continuity, 100.
[16] Gabriel Winant, “Deindustrialization, Working-class Decline, and the Growth of Healthcare,” New Labor Forum 30, no.2 (2021): 54–61.
[17] Lynd and Lynd, Middletown: A Study In American Culture, 9.
[18] Dorothea Browder, “Working Out Their Economic Problems Together: World War I, Working Women, and Civil Rights in the YWCA,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 14, no. 2 (2015): 244.. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43903081.
[19] Browder, “Working Out Their Economic Problems Together: World War I, Working Women, and Civil Rights in the YWCA,” 247.
[20] Ester M Snyder, History of Muncie Business and Professional Women’s Club: 1919-1962, 56. Accessed via Middletown Women’s History Collection, Ball State University Libraries Archives and Special Collections.
[21] Ibid, 6.
[22] Ibid, 55.
[23] Ibid, 50.