4/7/2023 0 Comments Pink plumberThe urgent need for women to have access to high-wage jobs is demonstrated by the fact that nearly 38% of all female-headed households with related children under 18 years old are living in poverty. FACT: The majority of women work because of economic need. In fact, 62% of working women earn half or more of their family’s income. Forty-five percent of women in the labor force are the sole supporters of their households: single (25%), divorced, widowed, or separated (20%). Women are in the labor force simply to earn some extra spending money. The Chicago Women In Trades website states, Like the 77 of 86 British lady plumbers in 1913, a large portion of working women are widowed, or otherwise unsupported by a partner. She died of leukemia in 2000.Īs I explored, I learned that many working women are also the sole breadwinners in their families. Note that Lillian went on to marry and have children. Men like her father deserve special praise–he helped to make Lillian’s achievements possible, at a time when it was almost unthinkable. Like a good number of the women I found, her father was a plumbe ( Miss Becomes a Master)Ĭlearly, she was drawn to plumbing from an early age. She scorned dolls for monkey wrenches when she was six years old and by the time she was 12 was a regular plumber’s helper on jobs with her dad. I found the first female Master Plumber in the US, Lillian Anne Baumbach Jacobs, who was fixing drains before she was three.Īn only child, the attractive Washington-Lee High School graduate, indicated an early desire to follow in her dad’s footsteps. Womens Suffrage was not granted in full in England until 1928. There were also women working as paperhangers, white washers, a coachman, clergy/priests/ministers (woah!), coalheavers, carmen and wagoners, blacksmiths, shipwrights, carpenters, masons–A total of 825 women reported that they were working as skilled laborers, despite gender barriers. Has any one ever seen a woman plumber? There are not many persons who could reply in the affirmative, but, according to the report of the census of England and Wales relating to occupations and industries, there are eighty-six women who ply the calling of plumber. Four Female Bricklayers - Other Strange English Census Records. I did a quick search for “women plumbers” and was fascinated by my findings.įor instance, the New York Times has a free PDF of an article from 1913: 86 WOMEN PLUMBERS. The thing is, I kind of want to thank her for bringing this up. That’s ok, we mock her back, just as snarkily. She mocks feminists, she mocks Steinem, she mocks women in trades. From the bowels of the earth, men are ruling the world. Steinem when this photo was taken? Her presence was needed. Does something seem amiss? You are right. Look at this New York Post photo of the crew that just completed a new subway tunnel in New York City. I am here to tell you that it is not just plumbing that remains a closed field to women. Almost everything that is humanly possible exists in this world and I don’t doubt there are one or two frustrated women who have unclogged drains since early childhooĭ and have longed, to no avail, to commit themselves to the lonely, back-breaking labor of the plumber’s life. Steinem is probably very plugged in to the feminine plumbing subculture. ![]() Steinem continues to be a penetrating thinker. Now, I have never met a single woman who wanted to become a plumber, let alone a woman who wanted to become a plumber but was prevented from fulfilling her dreams, but Ms. LAST MONTH, in an interview with the ever-incisive Katie Couric, Gloria Steinem noted, while offering a philosophical overview of contemporary society and world history, that there are relatively few women plumbers. This insight struck me like a lightening bolt. Active Woman Magazine // flickr user modashellĬheck it out, The Thinking Housewife can be snarky! Why Feminism Must Go Underground
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