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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   4732 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 24, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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My understanding is that there used to be fewer women in the workplace and more at home. When people say that before the 1970's, women had fewer rights than men in America, I assume that this is what they're referring to.

But it just occurred to me that there was no Jim Crow equivalent for women. Was anything stopping women from entering the workplace before? Was there anything that propelled them to do so?

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on Saturday, March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and girls and 23 men [emphasis mine - ox] – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, falling, or jumping to their deaths.

As @2rafa wrote, prole women have been working for wages since they lost the fight to the spinning jenny and later to the sewing machine. It's the middle-class women who got the chance to have a career and not just a teaching job to keep them busy until they invariably got married and became a homemaker.

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