Gendering Disability, Domesticity, and Dependency: Vocational Rehabilitation for Disabled Homemakers in the Post-World War II United States

In the post-World War II United States, homemakers with disabilities found increasing support through government-sponsored vocational rehabilitation. Amidst the postwar marriage boom and baby boom, policymakers, medical experts, public health officials, inventors, and disabled women themselves eagerly sought to expand the presence of homemaking within a system that had largely focused on male veterans and wage earners. With new funding from state and federal sources, such as the 1954 Vocational Rehabilitation Act Amendments, government agencies, universities, and professional organizations embarked on a range of initiatives designed to assist this population of ten million carry out their domestic duties. These included the creation of assistive devices, work-simplification techniques, instructional seminars, and new research programs all aimed at streamlining work processes. Although these innovations enabled women with disabilities to work independently, they did so while reinforcing their dependency on male breadwinners and the state. This paper will take as its focus this contradiction, and will argue that even though the rehabilitation of disabled homemakers bolstered dominant gender roles and able-bodied normalcy, it also posed new challenges to them. Most significantly, the state-sponsored vocational rehabilitation programs promoted ideas about dividing household tasks in non-traditional ways and also advanced arguments regarding the economic value of women’s work inside of the home.