Social Work Sociology

Women started to gain rights in the mid to late 1800 's in the workforce throughout the country.

”The situation of many industrial workers required that all household members, including women and children, contribute to the family economy. A majority of families struggled to get by on low wages and unstable employment patterns. Among the 12 million families enumerated in the 1890 census, 11 million survived on less than $100 per month, around$2,500 in today’s dollars (Upchurch, 2009). The labor of women and children was essential to household maintenance and is included in his figure. Many women and children entered mill employment or took piece work in at home to contribute to the family economy” (Barnes, p. 2.4, 2014). This event brought

Hull House opened in Chicago, Illinois during this time to help provide education, and health services for immigrants, the sick, and the poor. It also provided women the opportunity to continue their fight to work outside the home, and be an active participant in their communities. During this time social reform was a must for many Americans, when working, housing, and healthcare conditions were quite deplorable, and not regulated. “The growing profession of social work offered a different and more grounded response to the problems of a modernizing society. Although it would not fully flourish until after the turn of the 20th century, the reform agenda of social workers brought many middle-class women to the forefront of activism in the late 19th century” (Barnes, p. 3.2, 2014). The Hull House in Chicago, Illinois provided immigrants with education, and many female social workers taught at this house, and many others like it. This event helped women get out of the house, out of their social norm roles, and into the job force. It provided women with the confidence

Women continued to face opposition for rights, and the rise, and fear of communism around the time of the Cold War, post World War II lead to very definitive roles between the sexes. In Elaine Tyler May 's book Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era Elaine Tyler May aims to illustrate the connection between foreign and political policy and family dynamics during the post war and Cold War eras. She posits that political containment bred domestic containment. After World War II Americans married in greater numbers and with more stable, longer lasting marriages than previous generations. May argues that such uniform longing for marriage and families was not a passive act during the Cold War but rather a political statement. “Marrying young and having lots of babies were ways for Americans to thumb their noses at doomsday predictions” (May, p. 23, 2008). A secure family and home was how Americans could maintain their way of life against the communist threat. Individual containment being the final assault against Soviet communism as described in May’s account of the exhibition of a model American home that Vice-President Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev tour together in Moscow in 1959. “Nixon argued that the suburban home and the distinct family gender roles within it represented the essence of American freedom. In the United States women did not have to be hardworking, because their husbands provided them with the latest in labor-saving conveniences. American women were therefore able to spend time on cultivating good