American Historian And Labor Organizer, By Barbara Mayer...

Women place is in the home. That was the statement made by numerous labor union groups. They resented women in the unions, they felt it was a man’s place, they believed women belonged at home taking care of the children. It was this belief that made it difficult, although not impossible for women to break through the glass ceiling and make statements regarding conditions and treatment in the workplace. While they faced opposition constantly, they refused to give up. Barbara Mayer Wertheimer is an American historian and labor organizer; she specializes in United States labor and gender history and she analyses women’s work and their treatment in the labor unions. She offers various perspectives of this in her book, We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America. In Chapter 13, â€Å"Women in Teaching and White-Collar Jobs† she examines women in white-collar jobs. Those jobs included secretaries, switchboard workers, and retail clerks, nursing and teaching. H er thesis states, â€Å"But even though women were entering each of these job categories in increasing numbers, and the Chicago office workers’ local formally requested that the AFL send in a women organizer to help recruit women, the AFL executive council was not yet interesting in pushing unionization of this field and let the suggestion die.† It seemed as if the AFL felt that should include women, but did not want to be that progressive. Wertheimer supported her thesis by explaining how the women in each of the