How reforms to girlhood education in the Progressive Era cemented inequalities of gender, race, and class in urban school systems.
My book, Home Work, argues that white women reformers used school reform to control the labor lives of working-class girls in industrial cities. Using Chicago as a case study, Home Work explores how progressive era women’s groups expanded public education between 1870 and 1930 to redirect urban girls towards motherhood, homemaking, and “respectable” wage earning.
I argue that efforts to protect white American-born girls from industrial capitalism helped segregate urban education by both race and gender. Middle-class reformers like Jane Addams and Florence Kelley hoped dressmaking classes could help immigrant daughters pursue decent labor in the garment trades and cooking classes would foster healthier homes in the tenement districts. They believed longer school attendance protected white sexual purity by shielding second-generation girls from the sensationalized dangers of the “white slave trade.” Reformers successfully lobbied for new public schools, guidance programs, and federally-funded coursework between 1870 and 1930. But using school reform to solve “the girl problem” contributed to racial inequality by positioning the white working girl as most vulnerable and worthy of school investments.
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RUBY ORAM 