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Women in Business
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Business New Haven
4/6/1998
By:
Priscilla Searles
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From the earliest days of New Haven, women found ways to supplement the family income.
Many sold cheese or butter, hand-woven cloth or vegetables from the kitchen garden to keep the family going during the lean times. For women, there were few opportunities for employment outside the home. Working for other households as servants and later as teachers and nurses were the only choices most women had.
It was a rare woman in the 18th century who had the courage to start or run her own business. A New Haven newspaper carried the following ad: “Umbrellas Made, Repaired and New Covered by the subscriber on the shortest notice on reasonable terms at the shop directly opposite Major Munson's. Signed, Mary Sherry, April 5, 1798.”
But there were always a few women willing to buck the system, choosing to become writers, lawyers, doctors, businesswomen and entertainers. Dr. Emeline Robert Jones of Danielson was the first woman dentist in the nation, traveling from town to town before the Civil War. In 1850 Ann Stiles of Southbury received the first photographic patent ever issued to a female.
Born in 1843, Mary Hall of Marlborough was the first woman lawyer in Connecticut. With only a few female lawyers in the entire country, her achievement was great, though hardly easy. Hall passed her bar examination in March 1882 but had to appeal to the state supreme court before being admitted to the bar in October.
A New York Times editor clearly did not approve, writing of Hall, “Comparatively few parties to a suit would trust their property or their liberty into the hands of a female attorney, for the same reasons a man about to shave himself would not employ the convex mirror - so much is oddity out of place in serious matters.”
Beginning in the 19th century, many women found that obtaining work outside the home was essential to the survival of their families. For most the only work available was in sweatshops, where the wages were low and the women often abused and mistreated. In New Haven, as in many other cities, women and girls worked in the garment industry, often suffering sexual harassment and putting in ten-hour days. In 1933 unions were organized for both shirtmakers and dressmakers in New Haven and improvements in sweatshop conditions soon followed.
For immigrants, job opportunities could be even scarcer. Rachel Huggins Baker arrived in New Haven in 1905 from the West Indies as a teacher by training, but because of racial prejudice was unable to find work in her profession. Her daughter gives this account: “My mother did housework, sleep-in. In those days, you had to sleep on the job. She made two dollars a week. She was training to be a school teacher. When she came here she didn't have a chance. That's why she had to do housework.”
The Industrialization and the American Worker, written by Melvyn Dubofsky in 1975, points out the changes brought on by industrialization. “The creation of an industrial society characterized by a dominant blue-collar group laboring for wages affected all aspects of life. The differentiation between male and female forms of labor grew sharper, as did the differentiation between home and work. Men especially were concentrated in the primary and secondary sectors of the economy, with fully 45 percent of all males employed by 1920 in mining, construction, transportation or manufacturing. Women, however, were by then restricted to the lowest-paid jobs in the clerical sales and service fields.”
World War II created an opportunity for women to work in place of men at traditionally male jobs. When the men returned from the war, they wanted their jobs back but women had gotten a taste of working in fields previously held by men. They were willing to compete with men for good jobs. Thus the face of the workplace changed forever.
Connecticut women have always risen to the challenge of succeeding in fields once thought to be the sole domain of men. The Connecticut Women's Fall of Fame, located at 10 State House Square in Hartford, honors many of the women who have made major contributions to the state and the nation.
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