“Girls in Gray Flannel Suits”: White Career Women in Postwar American Culture

Abstract

In 1949, Life magazine ran a profile of the Daly family’s four daughters, all bright young professional women who were earning a combined annual salary of more than $100,000. Ten years later, the magazine’s editors decided to re-visit the “career sisters” to see what had happened. Their finding: “The four sisters said they would and … they all made good.” After a decade that one sister summarized as “hard work, babies, and fun,” the women had all married, collectively had nine children, and were now pulling in over $200,000 combined in their four thriving careers. Marguerite, age 41, had progressed from modeling to producing television fashion shows. Kathleen, 39, had climbed up the ladder to the vice presidency of a New York advertising agency. Maureen, 37, had continued her career as an author. Sheila John, 31, had gone from being a newspaper writer to working as a feature columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Her articles now appeared in fifty newspapers nationwide.²

Women on certain jobs are every bit as good as men. We wouldn’t think of having a man selling brassieres. But women will be stepping into top management spots. if s just an evolutionary thing.

— Montgomery Ward Vice President, 1956¹