Work Life And Education In The 1940's

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Work life and education are important roles in everyone’s life as both aspects provide the means to be able to live a stable and dignified life. In the 1940’s however work and education were not as accessible and female oriented as they are nowadays. My grandmother attended elementary school until she completed her eighth year at which time there was no further education or advancement opportunities offered to her. She began working on the family farm carrying out tasks such as: cooking, cleaning, laundry, tending to the garden, and many other “female jobs”. The job tasks between the girls and the boys were divided evenly by means of gender; the boys did the farm and machine oriented work with their father and the girls as previously mentioned …show more content…
Being able to train for a profession would have provided a better income for her family and would have expanded her knowledge on the working world outside of being a homemaker. In relation to the early waves of feminism this kind of task division is a reflection of the private and public sphere separation that was carried out for many years. The ideals of this job task separation lasted even after feminists fought for the right to carry out public sphere activities and be active members of the public sphere. These ideals are still apparent today in home and family life as most women work a regular job outside the home to financially support their families, and continue their work at home doing private sphere tasks. My grandmother carried out homemaker type work duties during her early years of adulthood until her youngest child was old enough to support and take care of himself. An important part of her children being able to support themselves while she was working was due to the fact that there was a lack of accessible and affordable daycare to small rural areas. She and her husband moved from the farm into Melville and she began working in the paid labor force as a dishwasher. She decided to enter the work force to provide financially for her family but also as a way to interact with those in …show more content…
Relating the work experiences of M. J. Angelique to those of my grandmother, white women were treated and looked at in much higher regard than black immigrants. The tasks between both women were comparable, however in terms of their treatment within the home they were much different; Marie Joseph Angelique was poorly mistreated due to her race and ethnic background while my grandmother was among a loving family setting and enjoyed the work she did. The tasks which both these women carried out also symbolized what kind of life they were living; my grandmother was a happy mother of six children and aspired to be a homemaker just as her mother was, on the contrary Marie Joseph Angelique did the same tasks because she was bought to be someone’s servant and had no true meaning or value to the home in which she was working in. The environments both these women worked in were completely different and are reflective in their actions later on in life. My grandmother continued to work both in the private and public sphere happily, sharing responsibilities between her husband and grown children, and expanding the family with grandchildren and
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