1865-1914-A Woman’s Place
The impact of the civil war
-The Civil War (1861-1865) had briefly offered married women the opportunity to work outside the home. In the vast rural areas of the US this was largely agricultural work as women replaced the men who had gone to war. Many women also worked as nurses in the war, but this was not seen as a profession by many, but rather an extension of their domestic work that was appropriate for a woman. Progress for women in medicine beyond the level of nursing was limited.
-By the late 1860’s medical colleges had strict controls on the number of women they admitted and allowed to graduate, largely as a result of opposition from male physicians. Nevertheless there was an increase at this time in the number of women beginning to be admitted into higher education generally.

Growth of industry
-The civil war acted as a catalyst in speeding up the progress of the US towards becoming the world’s leading industrial nation. This increased the work opportunities for women when the war ended. By 1870, 13% of all unmarried women already worked in domestic occupations or increasingly in factories. This figure was to expand significantly in the remaining decades of the 19th century.
-The situation for married women, however, did not change significantly. Married women were often banned from working outside the home, either by the policies of some employers or by state legislation. In any case, the overwhelming expectation was that once they were married, women would give up their jobs and be entirely focused on home and family. Married working-class women, however, who needed to augment the family income or escape poverty could participate in laundry, mending or lodgers.

Westward Expansion
-Further westward expansion in the 1860’s and settlement on the hostile territory of the Great Plains proved especially hard for women in this area. Here, living in isolation from communities and frequently at distance from main lines of communication, married women were cooks, cleaners, nurses, teachers, farm laborers, yet many died in childbirth due to the lack of medical care or became depressed as a result of loneliness.
-However some at least had been given the opportunity to own land in their own right with the 1862 Homestead Act.

Women and Work 1865-1914
-The closing decades of the 19th century and the decade and a half before WWI saw a period of change and opportunity for women occurred by a number of reasons:
Changing economy
-By the turn of the century opportunities for working-class women expanded as a result of a growth in the manufacturing industry. These changes largely benefited unmarried women between 1870 and 1900. Whereas in 1870 13% of all unmarried women worked outside the home, by 1900 the number of women workers tripled and so made 17% of the total workforce. Young, unmarried women, left domestic service for more lucrative work in the textile, garment making and food processing industries in most major cities.
-By the 1890’s unmarried women with a high school education could graduate from the factory floor to the clean, safe and more salubrious offices of business enterprises. The invention and production of the typewriter and telephone transformed this area of work, previously dominated by men. Here young female, white-collar clerical workers could earn $7 a week and gain some status. This expanding trend continued as did the increasing number of unmarried women employed in the shops that began to proliferate in the later years of the 19th century.
-By 1900 there were around 949000 women working as teachers, secretaries, librarians and telephone operators. There were however, no career pathways for women in white-collar work- men remained the managers. Equally almost certainly, the expectation that these young women would marry and leave the workforce determined their future prospects.
-But the picture was not one of progress and improvement for all women, as young white women who left the factory floor were increasingly taken by young immigrant women. As cheap, unskilled workers unprotected by legislation, their work conditions were poor, hours long and their wages low. By the end of the 19th century immigrant factory women had to work on average 70 hours to earn just $5. Poor and immigrant-married women were often forced by extreme poverty into factory work.
-Working-class married women in need of money to augment the family income were frequently exploited by devious entrepreneurs who bought old tenant buildings and obliged their home workers to live there. These overcrowded apartments became sweatshops where women and their children worked very long hours for little pay.