Peculiar occupations for women !!??
During some research last week, I used the 1910 Census of Population, volume IV, Occupation Statistics. On page 22 I read an unusual heading: Peculiar Occupations for Women. Peculiar Occupations? Oh how I laughed when I first read that heading! The paragraph continued – “The Thirteenth Census enumerators, like the enumerators at previous censuses, return women as following many occupations which are very peculiar and unusual for women.”
In other words, several occupations, such as sailors, longshoremen, smeltermen, and blacksmiths, were listed as having more than the expected number of women holding these jobs. Even though the U.S. Census does not state that no women held these jobs, they do believe there were mistakes made by the enumerators. And some were corrected before the census went to print.
So, looking at jobs held by women, of the 269,000 that worked with the telephone and telegraph industry, almost half were women. And yes, as you can guess, of those women, a large majority were telephone operators. I’m just biting my tongue right now to stop the jokes from pouring out! [And I'm a woman that fits that sterotype!]
Following a few more interesting facts about women and occupations in 1910:
508 cooks with the steam railway system
80 steam train car repairers
1 steam railway coppersmith
1 blacksmith (metal industry)
2 fitters (metal industry)
1 engineer in a power plant
Interesting the words used and the phrasing of terms 100 years ago. We learn so much about our past from original text. Another reason preservation is so terribly important as we try to decipher how we got from point A in one year, to parts B and C 100 years later.
