Illustrating Women’s Work: Early Maps of the Women’s Bureau

As World War One raged across Europe, American men left the civilian work-force in large numbers to fight, creating new employment opportunities for women. In 1918, toward the end of World War One, an act of Congress formed a war-time agency named “Women in Industry Service.” President Woodrow Wilson selected Mary Van Kleeck to lead the new agency, which was charged with understanding labor conditions for working women. Women in Industry Service was interested in issues such as regulating night work for women, ensuring safe working conditions for women, and arguing in favor of equal pay for equal work. The agency issued a series of reports, including the first edition of “Standards for the Employment of Women in Industry” in 1918.

After World War One ended, Women in Industry Service urged the federal government to recognize that women would continue to work post-war, and to create standards for private employment that the federal government itself could adopt. It also lobbied that the federal government use the power of government contracts to set terms for working conditions for agencies contracted by the federal government. A year after women secured the right to vote, Women in Industry Service officially became the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor through an act of Congress on June 5, 1920. Van Kleeck stepped aside, and her colleague Mary Anderson was appointed as the first agency Director, where she would serve for the next 24 years.

The legislative charge of the new Bureau was to “formulate standards and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment.” The first standards put forth by the Women’s Bureau related to work hours per day (and per week), break periods for meals, regulation of night work, and equality of wages. Some states, such as Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, and West Virginia, had no limits on the number of hours women could be required to work in a day.

The Women’s Bureau was also able to conduct studies to better understand working conditions. Throughout the 1920s and 1930, their reports focused on conditions in specific industries (such as canning industries, cotton mills, and spin rooms). They also studied the impact of race on employment, starting with a 1922 study on the working conditions of African-American women.

In order to advocate for the standards they recommended, the Women’s Bureau took a creative approach. The Bureau put together traveling exhibits comprised of graphic panels of information about women’s working conditions. These exhibits were loaned to organizations which were willing to feature them. Among the exhibit materials were six large colored maps for display, alongside charts and other graphic panels. The Geography & Map Division holds a selection of these large colored maps and charts, which you see featured throughout this post. The maps themselves are all at the state level, documenting how conditions for women varied geographically across the United States.

To expand their exhibit, the Bureau also put together a film titled “When Women Work,” which showed factory conditions for working women. In the 1921 Annual Report of the Director of the Women’s Bureau, the film is described as a “two reel motion-picture film” which was “designed to show in popular form the standards recommended by the Women’s Bureau for the employment of women in industry.” It was also noted that the film was created with the cooperation of manufacturers, which allowed them to film real working conditions. As of 1921, the film had been shown across 26 states and hosted by 67 organizations, with twenty copies of the film traveling “in constant use.”

In the 1920s, the Bureau advocated for living wages for women, equal pay for equal work among men and women, limits on the number of hours to be worked in a day, and safe working conditions. The reports of the Bureau of Women indicated that many of these issues, such as safe working conditions, were concerns for all employed workers, not just women. At the same time, they argued that some working conditions adversely affected women in specific ways, such as lead poisoning from hazardous working conditions having an effect on maternal health and birth rates.

Concerns about women’s labor and pay affected the Bureau itself, as well. In 1921, Mary Anderson noted that Congress had capped the salaries to be paid in the Women’s Bureau, resulting in “a discrimination against a few highly trained people who are doing most valuable work at a rate of pay considerably less than that paid for similar work in other departments and in other sections of the Department of Labor itself.”

In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act ordered that “no classification shall be made under this section on the basis of age or sex,” (an achievement of Mary Anderson felt was connected to the work of the Women’s Bureau) while also setting national standards for wages and working hours. It would not be until 1963 that the Equal Pay Act would prohibit sex-based wage discrimination – considered a major legislative achievement for the Bureau. The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923 to guarantee equality of rights under the law for all persons regardless of sex, has still not been passed. As of 2024, the Women’s Bureau still exists within the Department of Labor.

Sources and Further Reading:

Department of Labor: Women’s Bureau History

The Women’s Bureau: Its History, Activities, and Organization by Gustavus Weber, 1923.

1921 Annual Report of the Director of the Women’s Bureau