GNB
Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

Women At Work

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1915-1939

World War I sent women, especially married women, into the workplace but after the war married women were expected to go back home and most did. Still, during this period, New Brunswick women both at home and to a greater extent outside the home performed a variety of paid work. For women generally, these were very difficult years. This Exhibit plainly shows that women earned their living in a variety of ways; although some were interesting, the job situations of many women were marked by “drudgery”, low pay, and the whim of the employer. The 1920’s did see advances such as the telephone, which provided employment opportunities and more women advancing through better education (i.e. they were being prepared by vocational schools or business colleges to enter offices and businesses). In the 1930’s, relief was only provided to men – and in many cases, women had to provide for families when husbands lost jobs. Ironically, a feeling against women working and taking men’s jobs prevailed. More and more girls completed elementary school and went to high school and university than before the war. Though they were often channeled into female courses: home economics, secretarial studies, nursing and teaching, this bode well for the future as women could advance through education. For these years, this exhibit documents the lives of a few unique New Brunswick women who showed their creativity in adversity, using their ingenuity to create new lives for themselves. Kjeld & Erica Deichmann began their pottery business in 1935; Muriel Lutes built her shanty and opened a tiny business in 1933; Madge Smith took some of her best known photographs during the 1930’s (Railway Bridge, 1936), Mary Grannan left her teaching career and began her “Just Mary” broadcasts in 1939; Molly Kool studied and was licensed as a sea captain in 1939 and Frances Fish became the first woman to run for a seat in the Legislature in 1935. These are just a few known examples of New Brunswick women combining ingenuity and hard work to survive tough times. Certainly it was these same attributes which helped other NB women survive the depression.


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