Treatment of women in 1890's? (Easy 10 points)

Question

What was the treatment of women like in the 1890's time period. For example what was expected out of women and how were they treated in that time period?

Answer 1

Work opportunities for women expanded greatly during the second half of the 19th century.  By 1900, a third of all government jobs in the USA were done by women, and three quarters of all the nation's stenographers and typists were women. The telephone industry employed women as switchboard operators, and women had made inroads into library work.  large numbers of women worked as salesclerks in the new department stores, 142,000 by the end of the century.  Women were generally paid less than men, women teachers earned a lot less than male teachers for example.

Most women gave up work when they married, only very poor women continued working, 'juggling' was not seen as a desirable option in those days.  Poor married women who worked were often in domestic service, or they took in washing or sewing, or they might keep a boarding house.

Some women made a name for themselves in more exciting professions, like the investigative journalist Nellie Bly, a reporter for the New York World, who was on the front page regularly.  She got herself committed to an insane asylum, posed as a homeless woman, and inserted herself into New York's demimonde as a way of exposing conditions in the city's jails and hospitals.

Women in the USA started going to college in about 1870, by 1880 there were 42,000 women in college, about a third of the student population.  So popular did college for women become that the Ladies Home Journal ran a contest selling subscriptions in 1890, the prize was a scholarship to Vasser.  Nearly half of all female  college graduates remained single and devoted themselves to careers.

Many women were actively involved in social reform.  Many women were involved in the campaign for women's suffrage, and many more were involved in the Temperence movement.  jane Addams founded the settement house movement in 1889, by the turn of the century there were 100 settlement houses in the USA.

Women's clubs were enormously popular at this time, there were thousands of them throughout the USA.  Women, especially housewives, got together to discuss history or literature or current affairs.

Answer 2

They got married while still in their teens and most couldn't hold jobs unless they stayed single. Single women were viewed with pity and scorn but they had more rights and freedoms than married women. In those days, having children was very dangerous. Infant and maternal mortality rates were high. My grandfather was born during that period and his mother died shortly after giving birth to him. His father blamed him for the death and rejected him. People generally didn't live as long. I recall reading an article about an elderly woman who was 47 years old. Another big problem at the time was drinking, which is what led to Prohibition in the 1920s. Many men would spend their free time drinking and spending their money on that. If a woman had the misfortune of being married to such a man, there wasn't really much she could do. Abandonment was common. Many men and sometimes women would walk out on their families and disappear, leaving the children to go to orphanages. All in all, it was not a great time for women, especially if they were poor. Wealthy women have always had some sort of an immunity to the discriminatory practices at the time.