The economic position of womenAcademy of Political Science in the City of New York
History
The economic position of women
Academy of Political Science in the City of New York
Women -- Employment -- United States; Women -- United States -- Economic conditions
1. To maintain and increase efficiency and earning capacity in the
teaching profession, women must be prepared to give from two to five
years to graduate study.
2. Independent income ought not to be counted on to supplement earned
income.
3. The relation of cost of living to efficiency should be better
understood in order to lead teachers to insist upon advancement, even
at sacrifice of personal preference for locality and conditions of
living.
4. Although there is no prevailing standard of living, and the relation
between expenditure and income or between the various phases of
expenditure does not seem to be set, college women should try to set a
standard as quickly as possible.
In the study of wage-earning girls made by the research department
of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, the cost of living
of girls who reside with their families is considered separately.
Since the aim is primarily to discover the cost of living of the
self-dependent girl, the number of the other class studied is small,
consisting chiefly of immigrant girls and girls in the suburbs earning
a good salary and living at home or with relatives.
On the other hand, the study of the savings bank insurance committee
deals very largely with girls living at home, so that the two studies
supplement each other. The low contributions to the family reported
by Miss Bosworth show that the girl earning three to five dollars
is barely able to live, but her evidence that the higher-paid girl
contributes a larger sum (about four dollars and a half a week) to the
family, and supplements her payments by labor in the home indicates
that she is really self-supporting, because she is living practically
under a coöperative system. What she thus saves over the girl who
spends five or six dollars a week for sustenance results in a higher
standard of living or an opportunity to save. It is doubtless due to
this lower cost of board and room while living at home that the girl
who in Miss Bosworth’s study does not receive a living wage is in
Miss French’s experience able to begin to save. Here, furthermore, is
doubtless the explanation of the fact that while a girl living alone is
generally not able to live on a satisfactory standard under a wage of
nine dollars a week, the girl living at home, or coöperatively, begins
to save on a six to nine-dollar wage.
Taking up simply the woman living alone, we find ourselves confronted
with a study of factory workers, waitresses, clerks, saleswomen and
kitchen workers. A standard of housing is far easier to determine than
one of food. Size of room and location naturally affect rents; but it
is hard to reach satisfactory conclusions concerning number of windows,
sunlight, heat, bathroom accommodations, and number of roommates.
Provision for food is made in the following ways:
1. Cooking in one’s own room.
2. Basement dining rooms.
3. Working girls’ homes.
4. Meals included for service in restaurants and hotels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account