2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

The papers in this panel bring together different approaches to understanding women’s labor force participation, and particularly “pink collar” roles.

Cristina Groeger uses census data to track women in domestic employment within Boston in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Domestic employment was one of the primary employment options for working class women.
Midori Green focuses instead on the opportunities that the emerging field of stenography offered to women seeking work outside the home.

Kendra Boyd and Angela Hornsby-Gutting focus on the training opportunities created for black women through two different institutions. Boyd works on the business school opportunities for African American women in mid-century Detroit, through the establishment of the Lewis College of Business.
Hornsby-Gutting looks at the National Training School for Women and Girls, and the path it offered for financial autonomy for African American women.

From the mid-century onwards, Catherine Carstairs focuses on a particular job, dental hygienist, and how this came to be classed as a “pink collar” occupation.