"There is a tacit understanding that women should not make over twenty-five cents an hour." In 1920 women composed 23.6 percent of the labor force, and 8.3 million women older than the age of fifteen worked outside the home. By 1930 the percentage of women in the work force rose to 27, and their numbers increased to 11 million. World War I had expanded women's employment in new sectors of the economy, and by 1920, 25.6 percent of employed women worked in white-collar office-staff jobs, 23.8 percent in manufacturing, 18.2 percent in domestic service, and 12.9 percent in agriculture. While the first generation of college-educated women entered professions in the 1920s, they found opportunities only in nurturing "women's professions," such as nursing, teaching, social work, and, within medicine, pediatrics. And in factories, while male factory workers on federal contracts in 1920 started at forty cents an hour, women started at twenty-five cents.

The Women's Bureau and WTUL.