“The Help” Research Paper Life in the 1960s was very different from the time we live in now. There was segregation in every public place and even in the white’s homes if they had maids. In The Help’s portrayal of the black maids and white women of the 1960s, the white women were superior over the black maids. The white women hired the black maids to do their work, such as cooking, cleaning and taking care of their children. Most black women quit school to work so they could support their families.
Depending on the lower or upper level of the middle class, women were able to be work as school mistresses, or not work at all and only take care of the house. As upper class and middle class women had little advantages to their life, lower class women often had none. They were married to poor farmers, with no education and often had to work just as hard as their husbands, maybe even harder as they had a responsibility of taking care of the house and children. In some parts of the Western Europe, lower class women had to work in textile mills or various workhouses parted away from their families, working many, many hours. Double burden was also common at the beginning of 1900’s as women worked to earn money but also had the responsibility for unpaid, domestic labor.
Particularly vulnerable groups were the old, who had no means of acquiring money. The young, were dependant on their parents’ financial status and good will, if they were not orphans. Seasonal workers were vulnerable due to the cyclical nature of their employment. Anyone who suffered from illness either long or short term fell into poverty because there were no sickness benefits. Women were another vulnerable group because they were always paid at a lower rate than men.
The paper referred to prostitutes as sisters and Men were usually depicted as the wrongdoers. This was a concept unheard of in Ingraham’s society. Ingaham shed light on the fact that once a woman was violated and abandoned by a man, she became shunned by the community, lost all opportunities to be married to a “good man,” had few job prospects available to her, as well as had no legal recourse. The only job women could hold at the time was as sweat shop employees, where they would be paid extremely low wages, on which survival was difficult, especially if the women had to support her children. Ingraham felt this broken system had been pushing women onto the street and into prostitution.
The role of women before war: Upper-class women did not work before the war and few worked after it. Working-class women, on the other hand, had to work to help keep their families. They worked before the war mostly in factories and in domestic services as maids. As many as 11% of all women worked as domestic servants before the war. The war gave them the chance to work in a greater variety of jobs but most of these new jobs were lost at the end of the war.
Education, employment, and politics are all barriers where women were held back from the full development of their faculties. In the 19th century women were denied political equality, robbed of their natural rights, and handicapped by laws and customs at every turn. Trained to dependence with no assets of their own women were left to bear the attitude of being less intelligent and able to make political decisions than men. While they have freely accepted a deferential position to men they have also refused to look toward a future of tradition and domesticity. The campaign for women’s suffrage had a sincere beginning
In the 1950’s, there were wives who were suffering from depression. Women sacrificed a lot for their families during this time (MailOnline). Some women did not get to further their education because they had children in their early twenties. These women were unable to go out and participate in activities outside of the home because they had to be the “perfect housewife” and manage the home (Lamb). It was like they were confined to the vicinity of their home.
A woman working in the same job as a man will usually earn less, despite the fact that she may have the same or better training, education, and skills required for the job ("Study Shows Female Managers in Britain Earn Less than Men, and Equality Could Be 57 Years Away." 2010). Women are consistently discriminated against in the workplace. Women only make 60 percent or less than their male counterparts in the same job position (Louis, 2010). Throughout history men are seen as the “strong/tough ones”; the belief is that they should be paid more than women in order to support their families (Loney, 2005).
Since their husbands were laid off, bringing in little or no money, the women went out to look for part time jobs such as being a maid to the wealthier families. The women also had a hard time keeping her young children in school, especially if they lived on a farm because the children would need to help their mother and father with the animals and crops, so they wouldn’t get a proper education. The few women that went to collage had to drop out because the price was too high to afford to stay in. It was harder for women to get a job because they were weaker than men and most likely inexperienced but they would take what they could get, if they could get anything. The women who was at their last resort was to send their children away to work and earn a small pay to buy food.
Before the war, women were treated awfully, and were not allowed to work or make a living for themselves and their families. After World War II, although many women lost their jobs at the factory, they were able to get other jobs elsewhere. Women were able to movie in to jobs in the booming service sector, where there was a great need for employees. They became teachers, nurses, librarians, bank tellers, and social workers. At these jobs women were able to earn just over half of what men earned.