Henrietta Rodman and the Fight to Further Women’s Economic Autonomy

Abstract

In 1909 at the graduation ceremony of an American college for teachers the class clown wrote on a placard: ‘Know ye sisters, that all who enter this profession are condemned to spinsterhood’.¹ Though her conclusion was correct it was hardly a joke to thousands of women who were forced to choose between their work and marriage. While women predominated in the profession, patriarchal traditions continued to rule it throughout the early twentieth century in the United States. School boards, usually dominated by conservative businessmen, often thought of themselves as a bulwark against a society spiralling out of control. Thus, they were more prone to repel women’s rights than support it. Prior to the turn of the twentieth century women who worked were more pitied than admired, since the majority did so out of dire necessity and in factories or domestic service. In 1900, 45.9 per cent of all single women, 55.3 per cent of divorcees and 31.5 per cent of widows worked outside the home, compared to 5.6 per cent of married women.² However, by the late 1920s married women constituted over 25 per cent of the female labor force, among these an expanding percentage of middle-class women who took up work in the professions.³