Women in the Work Place

In this article, three different groups of workingwomen are examined during the early 1900’s in Montreal. Women who no longer chose to stay at home and be a housewife were divided into three distinct categories. These groupings were based on class, education level and income. Although no woman could earn as much as a man did, they were slowly being more accepted and respected in the workplace. The levels of job varied greatly depending on the level of education a women had. In most industries there was not much time or money for training, so any well paying job required knowledge of the business before hand. Lower class jobs were very physically and mentally demanding. Although some did give women the freedom to go to night school to gain an education so that they could get a better job, often times they did not pay high enough to be able to afford schooling. During this point in history, women as young as ten to twelve were able to find jobs to help support their families. These weren’t often very high paying jobs with good working conditions, but families were in need of money at this time, so any family member old enough to work was expected too. This article is able to inform us as to what was going on within the different classes of women, and how their roles in society changed as men went off to war. The first group of women that was examined was women who worked in offices and commercial jobs. “There [was] a constant demand for women stenographers and clerks in business and professional firms” (1) most likely because these positions demanded an education, which was a hard asset to come by during the early 1900’s. Not surprisingly, the likelihood of women being employed increases dramatically the higher their level of educational attainment. Telephone operator companies gave their employees minimal training at the least, unlike other businesses. Some telephone operating companies allowed women to work from home, this was extremely helpful for women who did

Cited: Derick, C. “General Report on Women’s Work,” Royal Commission on Industrial Training Part IV (Ottawa, 1913) 1975–1976. Johnson, Laura C., Jean Andrey, and Susan M. Shaw. "Mr. Dithers Comes to Dinner: Telework and the merging of women 's work and home domains in Canada." Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 14.2 (2007): 141-161 Word Count: 1361