The New Deal also had a positive effect on women’s involvement in organized labor.  The NRA and the Wagner Act’s backing of organized labor both strengthened traditionally female labor unions and helped women get more involved in male-dominated unions.  The International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union experienced a second wave of successful organizing to regulate hours, improve wages, slow down production rates, and outlaw mandatory overtime for women working in the needle trades.  In New York, domestic servants took advantage of NRA codes and the Wagner Act to form the first successful union of domestic workers in the country, the Domestic Workers Union.(71) 

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was founded during the New Deal period and organized entire industries rather than single crafts, meaning that unskilled women in the auto, rubber, metal, leather, and glass industries were included in CIO unions alongside male workers.  The United Auto Workers and the United Electrical Workers included women in especially large numbers.  In 1937, the CIO gave charters to three white-collar, all-female unions, including the United Office and Professional Workers of America (UOPWA), which initiated successful wage/hour strikes in mailing firms and publishing houses nationwide.  In 1934, the AFL decided to expand its roster of women workers and even chartered the New York Domestic Workers’ Union.(72)  Even agricultural workers made some headway because of the New Deal labor reforms.  In 1934, black and white male and female sharecroppers in Arkansas organized into Southern Tenant Farmers Union.  Women unionists were major organizers of the 1935 strike of 5,000 cotton pickers, which raised wages and convinced the government to establish an investigatory commission to study the plight of southern sharecroppers.(73)   

A flyer for the Domestic Workers Union,
c. 1930s, Washington, D.C.

Read more about the
Domestic Workers Union

Domestic servant in Atlanta, GA, 1939

By 1940, 800,000 American women workers were unionized---triple the number in 1930.  New Deal programs legitimized women’s collective bargaining efforts, encouraged more women from more industries to unionize, and encouraged traditionally male national unions to include women.

While the New Deal improved women’s experiences in industry in many ways, its programs were plagued with sexism and racism and therefore preserved prejudices against women, especially African American women, in the work force.  The NRA codes did raise women’s wages from what they had been before the Depression, but they did not equalize them with men’s wages.  In fact, the NRA specifically stipulated lower wages for women than for men, even for the same work.(74)  Also, because the NRA focused on industry, where more men were employed than women, its wage and hour codes did not apply to the non-industrial work, such as agriculture, domestic service, teaching, nursing, and clerical work, where most women were employed.  The vast majority of women workers in the Depression did not enjoy wage increases or 40-hour weeks.(75) 

The NRA did recognize that work from home constituted a highly exploitative employment for women, but, instead of setting higher wages, its codes outlawed the work all together.  This left the many mothers who relied on working from home because they could do it while watching their children without any wage-earning opportunity.(76)  Only about 15% of the workers hired by the WPA were women, and very few of them were African American women.  Their work was considered unskilled, and women were paid less than men.  In the late 1930s, women with children were fired in mass numbers from WPA jobs because they were supposed to be able to collect money for having child dependents, but those payments were very difficult to get, and many women were left without any incomes.(77)

National Relief Association Poster

1937 Woolworth strike in New York