Working with the Working Woman
Cornelia Parker’s Working With the Working Woman takes the reader through six different low paying jobs that women held in 1921.
The six part series was originally introduced in Harper’s Magazine in 1921 and published by Harper and Brothers Publishers a year later.1 Parker offers statistics on the growing rate of women in the workforce in the early 1900s such as this one:“Since the Civil War look at us--8,075,772 women in industry, as against 2,647,157 in 1880.”2 This statistic speaks volumes because it shows how women began getting out of the house and attaining more jobs. These jobs allowed women to showcase skills like toughness and resilience that helped women prove their worth in society. These efforts paid off for women when they gained the right to vote in 1920. To conclude, 1880 to 1920 proved to be a critical time in history because of the advancements women made in the workforce.
1 “"Working with the Working Woman" - Cornelia Stratton Parker - Harper's,” dlib.nyu.edu, Accessed April 21, 2016.
2 Cornelia Parker, Working With the Working Woman (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1922), XV.