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Women in Business and the Workforce

History of Women at Work

This page offers resources on the history of American women in business and workplace including books, periodicals, and government resources. One of the important government agencies for historical information on women workers is the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor. Established by Public Law No. 66-259 in 1920, it has been covering labor issues related to women by investigating, studying, and publishing its findings, many of them resulting in policy changes that have improved working women's welfare. Its predecessor, Women in Industry Service was established in 1918 to address labor issues of women who stepped in to take industrial jobs to alleviate labor shortage during World War I. Women in Industry Service conducted field investigations and surveys on women's employment and published the findings in its Bulletin which was continued by the Women's Bureau, covering a wide range of issues from wages, hours, and working conditions in specific industries to health problems and industrial accidents in various industries and in different states. We have included the Bulletin and a few other publications below, but we recommend looking at the online archive of Bulletin of the Women's Bureau on FRASER that lists individual titles with full-text access to really see the range of issues covered. For example, you can learn about the working conditions of women in the candy industry in the early 1920s and how much they made from one of the Bulletins by just searching for "candy." 

Women's Bureau Publications

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Government Reports and Studies

FRASER is a digital library of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that provides full-text access to resources on U.S. economic, financial, and banking history. We have listed collections of publications that cover women's employment history.

Periodicals

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Books

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.