This federal agency has both informed and directed the continuing fight for women's rights. In 1920, Congress approved the creation of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor to create "standards and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning women." Under the leadership of its first director, Mary Anderson, from 1920 to 1944, the bureau helped direct lobbying by such groups as the League of Women Voters, the Young Women's Christian Association, and the American Association of University Women. Anderson opposed an Equal Rights Amendment as a threat to legislation protecting women workers and emphasized alleviating the plight of working women over securing careers for middle-class women. Besides calling for protective legislation in the workplace and the home, the bureau also was an important disseminator and clearinghouse of information for and about women, which it used to assist its case for protective laws for them. It cited one finding, for example, that they usually worked not to provide luxuries but to help feed their families and that they faced the added burden of housework after their first workday was through.
The bureau achieved mixed results. Many continued to doubt its findings. Feminists divided over its longtime opposition to an Equal Rights Amendment. During World War II, it emphasized war production over helping women in general, and black women in particular, make significant inroads into the permanent work force; but it also urged employers to give women rest time and an eight-hour day. By 1969, with the appointment of Elizabeth Koontz as director, the Women's Bureau began to shift away from seeking protective legislation for working women toward supporting the Equal Rights Amendment.
See also Feminist Movement; Labor; Women and the Work Force.
