I chose this image I wanted to do something based off women and The Great Depression. I have always read a lot about men losing their jobs during this time, but I haven’t seen much about women. I also found this specific poster very interesting because I wouldn’t have imagined that there would be any jobs being advertised for girls/women because there were barely any for men, and back then equality for men and women was far worse.
The image I chose reveals that during the 1930s, there were jobs for women. However, the jobs being advertised on the poster seemed to be jobs that were home jobs because it directly said “household employment”. It’s jobs that a woman that was a mother would regularly do at her own home. There’s two specific historical question that I’m asking while looking at this image. The first one is; Was being a maid during The Great Depression a normal job for a woman? It seem as if “household employment” is just a fancy word for being a maid and that’s why this question crossed my mind. An inference I can draw from this is that those were upper class must’ve been the ones advertising for “household employment” because they are the ones who could afford to pay a maid. The second historical question that crosses my mind is, how much were women paid during this time?
The methods used help people think more critically by really almost “challenging” the image. It really makes someone dive into the context and even make inferences. There’s only so much a poster or a image can really convey, but trying to rip off the surface level context and looking into what’s really behind it works with these methods. The site of consumption method was most interesting to me because I was able to put myself in the shoes of a woman in the 1930s and think about what I would think if I saw this poster hanging somewhere. It really puts you in the shoes of the audience during that time and I appreciate being able to see their perspective.
These methods helped me interrogate my historical questions by putting myself in the shoes of a woman in the 1930s. It made me think of questions that I would think of if I was a woman during that time and that I transferred that to a question nowadays I would ask. I wondered if women during the 1930s viewed “household employment” as being a maid, which lead me to one of the two questions I listed a few paragraphs above. The site of production made me really challenge the question, “What’s the real point behind this?” These methods helped me think critically and also think of “thinking critically ” questions.
