Tell me about the women in The Great Depression?

Question

What did that they do? How did they help their families during the struggle? How did they feel?

Answer 1

My mother is 88 years old, and suffering from severe dementia, living in a nursing home. We had to sell her house to pay her bills, and spent the whole summer clearing and sorting things. She left us a lot of memoirs which we treasure a great deal.

She was a young girl during the depression, living on a farm, and remembers the cellar being full of jars filled with all sorts of vegetables. Her grandparents lived with them (two sets of parents, she says) and she had 6 brothers and sisters. Her grandfather tended the vegetable garden while her father worked the crops. She remembers her grandfather plowing that garden with a mule who kept "euchreing" on his garden, which made him angry because then he had to step around the piles left by the mule.

Her grandparents BOTH graduated from college before they were married, and were both teachers until they moved to the farm. They had a box camera, and her mother took a whole album full of baby pictures of her in 1918. Her brothers and sisters' baby pictures never got developed, because they couldn't afford that. Many years later, she found all that film, developed it for her mother, and it was no good-- no pictures.

My mother went to college in 1936, but she had to go to a work/study college, and struggled a great deal. The letters she wrote home were a story of a very brave young lady who never seemed to have enough energy or money to do as well as she wanted to do in college. Yet she graduated, got her teaching certificate, and taught school for 2 years before getting married. Thirty years later, after her 4 children were all in school, my mother finished getting her bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees.

Women were the same then as they are now... but they had to struggle. And that struggle made them better in some ways.

I♥♫→mia☼☺†

Answer 2

Read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.It is a novel but it will give you an idea of the hard life of people who struggled to survive the depression.Ma Joad was a very strong woman who did her best to keep her family together, it is a realistic tale of a farming family travelling cross country simply trying to survive each day.It is not a romanticized look at life.

Answer 3

Prostitution was a popular profession among women during the depression.

Answer 4

wealthy women who kept their wealth did pretty much the same thing they had always done. however, there was a split between the women that believed to show off one's wealth was in bad taste so they continued their lives in private and the ones that believed that if they showed off their wealth it would cheer people up and make them work harder. wealthy women also poured a ton of money and energy in social works projects to attempt to help the poor like opening shelters, soup kitchens, medical clinics, charity drives, etc. the wealthy women did far more than any other group as a whole, with the exception of our national government once FDR came to office, than any other group to improve the lives of the poor.
for the wealthy that suddenly no longer wealthy, there was cheap housing provided by other wealthy so that they could continue to live in the manner to which they had become accustomed without the wealth but also so that they wouldn't have to be around poor people. this housing came in the form of oppulent apartments with housekeepers, cooks, and butlers, etc provided.
for the most part, people who were middle class that suddenly became poor fared the worst. these were people who were used to having enough of everything and did not know how to function as a zero income person. these are the people that starved and died often because they either did not know how to make their money streatch because they had never had to do so, or because they were too proud to ask for help. these are the people who had the highest suicide rate.
the women that survived learned lessons from poorer people. they learned that if there was only enough food for one person in the family to eat, that person would have a meal while the others left the home so they wouldn't have to watch. they learned to take turns having meals. they learned what foods were the cheapest, filled you up the best, and lasted the longest (potatoes and onions fried in grease or lard). they learned how to mend their clothes. they learned that if all the women (mothers, daughters, aunts, etc) wore the same size, between them all they could share 1 nice dress to use to go to church. they learned that if they sent their kids to school without lunch, the teachers would feel so sorry for the kids that the teachers would skip their own lunch to be able to give it to the kids. they learned to no longer wear shoes in the house because that made them last longer (up to this point everyone always wore shoes in the house. now we take them off as soon as we get home). they began to run laundry and ironing services out of their homes. they joined the workforce in droves, which was the first time women as a whole worked outside the home. they left their farm communities when they were young and shared small apartments with many other young women in big cities to work in factories, then sent the majority of their income home to their struggling families. they learned birth control methods so there wouldn't be as many mouths to feed. they took their children out of school and sent them to work. the women and children were often the sole support for the family because the husbands could not find work and many of the husbands left home in shame and took to traveling to other areas to find work vowing to come home if they ever found work, which they either never found work or they never came back home. they stopped socializing because if someone invited you to their home, they had to provide a snack at the very leas, then you would be socially obligated to invite them to your home. they learned in the winter that if they could not afford coal or wood to heat their homes, they could afford to go to the movies to see a double feature because at least they would guarantee a warm place to sit comfortably for several hours. they learned to layer their clothing in the winter and would often wear every item of clothing they owned so they didn't have to spend so much money on fuel to heat the home. they learned to only heat the kitchen by using the stove where they were cooking and not use any of the other rooms if they were fortunate enough to have more than one room in their home. when it was very cold, the family would also sleep in the kitchen.
the women were very resourceful because they had to be.

if you need any more information, message me from my profile and i would be happy to help.