Women in the New Economic Era

The assembly line and mass production created the consumer economy with the automobile.  In the 1920s most women were working outside of home, but males dominated in the work field.  Most men worked in auto plants and other assembly-line factories.  Women face wage discrimination, men were getting paid more than men.  By the 1930s 2 million women were working in corporate offices as secretaries,typists, or filing clerks.  About fifty-thousand women received college degrees. Women would entered traditional “women’s professions” such as: nursing, librarianship, and school teaching.  Medical school limited the number of women physicians between 1910-1930.  Women were seen as consumers.  Glamorous women smiled behind the steering wheel, swooned over new appliances and smoked cigarettes in romantic settings.