What was the impact of the New Deal on women?

Answer 1

During the Great Depression, the customary job for women, was that of homemaker. There was a rising incidence of men abandoning their families. When this happened, the women had no choice other than to try and find a means to support their families. Beyond professional women, jobs tended to be as maids, cooks, secretaries and store clerks. Jobs were scarce, and those unable to obtain one, often had to resort to prostitution.

Answer 2

Not a very large impact, in general. There were many reasons for this. The primary one being the nature of the WPA, which was the main hiring program of the New Deal. The WPA employed millions of people to keep the economy moving while providing the government with cheap labor to build mostly infrastructure. To ensure that employment was available to as many as possible, only one member of each household could be hired for that program at a time. Naturally, this favored men because they did harder work that typically paid more so they had a far higher hiring rate. Many women were hired, but the amount is small in comparison without any large effect on women's roles. The second world war, though, would have an enormous and lasting impact on women.

Answer 3

In many ways. However, the primary response is that the Great Depression negatively affected women's rights. One way that it did this was by decreasing the number of available jobs. With less available jobs, women took a back seat to the needs of men. Culturally, men were primarily the bread winners of the family therefore it was more necessary (more socially acceptable) for men to be employed rather than women. In total, although women made great strides over time and through World War I, gaining the right to vote, entering the workplace, moving away from stay-at-home traditions, they once again had to step back from the advancement of their place in society during the great depression.

Once World War II starts this all turns around and women once again enter the workforce in extremely large numbers.

Answer 4

The impact that the New Deal had on women was not good at first as the government did not help women who were the Head of Household. Later, the New Deal gave women jobs to support their households.

Answer 5

It brought employment rates down and made people jobless in the U.S