September 25, 1932: Women Fight Back Against Cutback Legislation

[niyad]

September 25, 1932: Women Fight Back Against Cutback Legislation




A new weapon in what’s becoming a war on women in the workforce was denounced tonight by Civil Service Commissioner Jessie Dell at a meeting sponsored by the National Woman’s Party at its Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Section 213 of the Economy Act of 1932 was allegedly passed in an effort to spread Civil Service jobs around to as many families as possible during the current economic crisis. It declares that if cutbacks are needed, those who have spouses working for the Government must be dismissed first, and if new positions become available, priority must go to those who do not have Government employed spouses.

Dell noted that the original bill called for the dismissal of wives only, but at the last minute, due to “fear, on the part of legislators, of the political effect, if discrimination against women were otherwise so clearly and forcibly shown,” the text was changed to make it neutral in regard to gender. But the change was purely cosmetic. Since men are generally promoted higher and faster than women, virtually all husbands earn more than their wives, so if cutbacks require a family to live on just one salary, it’s invariably the lower-paid wife who will resign to protect the higher-paid husband’s job, not vice versa.

Dell also noted that if keeping a family from having too many Government jobs is the aim, why not prohibit fathers and sons from being simultaneously employed, or any two family members living in the same household? She said that the real purpose of the law was “to strike at the employment of women generally” and that “this strange freak of legislation is merely a reaction against the employment of women on the part of men who, after all the remarkable work women have done, still cannot push aside their biased opinions and honestly consider the real good of the service.”
Civil Service Commissioner Jessie Dell



Prejudice against married women in the workforce is nothing new, of course, and strict bans on women teachers marrying, which were widespread decades before the current Depression hit, are not totally extinct even today. Some private companies are also implementing such policies. In a typical example, last September 28th, the Norfolk and Western Railroad announced that after October 1st it would not employ married women, and that any single woman who was presently employed there would automatically be fired if she married. Hostility toward the employment of married women has skyrocketed with the unemployment rate, and has now been formally (if covertly) enshrined in Federal law. The new law states: