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“Everybody Works but Father”: Why the Census Misdirected Historians of Women's Employment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2016
Abstract
Because the US Census Bureau changed the way they reported workers’ marital status, the subfield of US women's labor history unwittingly perpetuated a key misinterpretation of women's labor force participation, allowing historians to believe that women in the workforce between 1880 and 1920 were overwhelmingly young and single women: the daughters of their families rather than the mothers and wives. This change in census reporting was reinforced and promulgated by Joseph A. Hill's 1929 work, Women in Gainful Occupations, 1870–1920. Why was this change made? This article argues that this change came about because of a confluence of various factors, including the Census Bureau's continual struggles with organizational and technological changes, the beginning of World War I, and reformers’ arguments about the efficacy of pushing for maternity insurance for women workers. The story of this change once again reminds us that statistics are never neutral nor apolitical.
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