Women want to be able to decide whether or not to work. If a man tells a woman to work she usually won't. For one thing she feels that if she works when he tells her to then he gets used to it, and sometimes stops working regularly himself. He thinks that she should support him. One woman I know had to stop working because her husband thought that he could go out gambling with the money that she was making. On the other hand, if her husband tells her not to work, that doesn't mean that she will stay home. When a woman goes out to work it is not always with the approval of her husband. Many men resent their wives working. They use as an excuse the fact that the children should stay with their mother. They also say that they are not able to help their wives with the children and with the house and shopping. Others will make it so unbearable by putting the entire burden on their wives that finally the wives will be forced to quit.
Women have to fight those men who believe that a woman's place is in the home, and that is where they should stay. These are the men who don't want their wives to have any independence at all, and who want to he the only ones who bring in a check so they are the only ones with a say in their homes. When a woman goes out to work, they know that she becomes much more of a person in her own right. Women have shown these men that a woman's place is wherever she wants to be.
Those women who want to go on working and whose husbands don't want them to, don't tell their husbands about how hard it is to work. They keep all of that to themselves One woman on our line at work has to fight to keep working She has a fourteen year-old daughter and she says there is nothing to keep her home. Yet her husband, a professional who makes good money is constantly asking her to quit She never shows how tired she is when she gets home and she can't afford to ask him for help or lie will make her quit. There is quite a difference in the feeling toward women working between those women who have to work and those who work because they want to. If a woman works because she wants to, she doesn't have to take as much from the company and she can tell the boss to go to hell with his job as my neighbor puts it. When she gets tired of working she knows she can quit, and even if she doesn't quit the very fact that she can makes her more independent of the company .
Those women who have to work the single women who are supporting themselves and sometimes their parents or the divorced women who are supporting their children, must stick to their jobs no matter how they feel or what they feel like doing. When these women get tired of working, they just go right on working. They have no choice. The company usually takes full advantage of this and knows it can depend on these women for Saturday work and overtime. When you are paying ten or fifteen dollars a week for nursery school alone, every penny counts.
Factory work for women is sometimes easy work-that is, it is not hard physically. But, like all factory work, it is dull and monotonous. In certain industries, it is hard physically. You feel in every muscle that you have put in a day's work. The important thing, no matter what kind of work you do, is the people you work with. If the work is easy but dull, then it is the other women who make the day pass at all. If it is hard work, the only thing that keeps you going is the other women who are doing the same thing you are and going through it with you. It is not the work that is so important to you and that makes factory life bearable. It is the people with whom you work that you care about.
There is always something going on in the plant. Either someone is cracking a joke or clowning or you are having a fight with the foreman or lead girl. There is always a discussion going on about something, and everything is talked about. Sex problems or their current affairs, housework and how to manage the children, new dance steps and the latest styles, price control and housing, ways of gaining and losing weight. No matter what you want to talk about, there is someone to talk to. The girls consider each other's feelings and interests.
Unlike the company, the girls care about each other. When on person is out, she is missed and someone usually calls to find out what is the matter. If something is seriously wrong with a particular girl. Though her immediate group of friends start a collection to buy her something or to give her money to pay the extra bills. The girls give freely of their time and their money. If a girl is rot feeling well a certain day, then the other girls or some special friends will work twice as fast to make up for her work so that she doesn't have to miss time from work. The company never worries about the individual person. They expect, come hell or high water, the same amount of work every day. The girls are the only ones who care about each other and will help you out when you need it.