McDannell, Colleen; Kessler-Harris, Alice; Derr, Jill Mulvay; Schneider, Dorothy; Thistle, Susan (University of Utah)
Faculty Advisor: McDannell, Colleen (University of Utah, Humanities)
My research aims to understand and analyze the ways in which Latter-day Saint women in the 1950s justified and reconciled their participation in wage labor with their religion.
My research is based on primary source material in the Aileen H. Clyde Twentieth Century Women's Legacy Archive. This archive includes a collection of letters that were written to Ramona Cannon to be published in the "Confidentially Yours" column in the Deseret News from 1948 to 1965 and include writings of women addressing their challenges and concerns. I use this resource to analyze the experiences of individual women and specifically their understanding and justification of their involvement in wage labor. I also use secondary source material to establish women's relationship to labor in the United States.
My goal is to draw conclusions about how LDS women who were involved in wage labor justified their participation when they lived in a society heavily influenced by the LDS Church and it's on emphasis women's domestic roles. The Archive letters show a pattern of women who felt they had to justify their labor practices through extenuating circumstances that necessitated temporary participation in wage labor, including wives with sick husbands, single mothers, and a society dealing with the effects of WWII, as well as women who actively sought to participate in the workforce by selectively choosing jobs and opportunities to supplement what could be seen as extensions of the domestic roles they were expected to fill in the home.
This balancing act for women is relevant not only to the twentieth century but reflects an ongoing struggle worldwide for women. This case study of Latter-day Saint women illustrates how women in a close-knit religious community reacted to changes in labor expectations and provide an important outlook on understanding the relationship between women and wage labor.