The first wave of princess films was released between 1937 and 1959, a time of financial hardship, war, and societal change. The Great Depression, President Roosevelt's ‘New Deal’, and America entering World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor changed societal roles for women and men significantly.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was Walt Disney's first full-length feature animation, and the first of its kind. It was released at a time when millions of workers were losing their jobs; farmers and sharecroppers lost their livelihoods due to extreme drought; and there were no social security or unemployment benefit schemes to support workers until after 1935 (Jones 2004:429). Despite this, women had been granted access to many areas of the workplace, as well as political office. Hattie Wyatt Caraway became the first female elected to the US Senate, and Frances Perkins was appointed as the first female within the US Cabinet as the Secretary of Labour. However, these ‘firsts’ were short lived (Mollet 2020: 21), with The National Recovery Act (1932) only allowing one family member to hold a government job (Deutsch 2000: 453), resulting in many female government workers becoming unemployed (Evans 1997: 201–2). Dominant sectors for women to find work were ‘sales, communications, and secretarial work’ (Jones 2004: 430). The 1930 census cited 10,752,116 (around 22 per cent of women in the US) as ‘gainfully employed’ (Census 1930: 6), whereas by 1940, 13,007,480 women were employed (Census 1940a: 29), and 37,464,420 women were not considered to be in the labour force (Census 1940b: 57). For Black women this period was even more difficult (Mollet 2020: 22). They could only find part-time or seasonal work, were not paid a living wage due to sexual and racial discrimination, and were exploited within the workplace (Jones 2004: 429). In the 1930s and 1940s, communications, sales, and secretarial work were dominated by white women (Jones 2004: 430), and ‘nine out of ten Black women workers toiled as agricultural or domestic servants’ (Jones 2004: 429). In some cases, where Black women were employed within manufacturing, it would be in the most dangerous areas where their health was put at risk (May 2000: 482).