Laura's Thought on Women's Work Undone

Flaring headlines in the papers have announced that "women will fight to hold jobs," meaning the men's jobs which they took when the men went to war. What to do about the situation seems to be a very important question. One would think that there must have been a great number of women who were idle before the war. If not, one wonders what has become of the jobs they had. To paraphrase a more or less popular song -- I Wonder Who's Holding Them Now?

With men by the thousands out of work and the unemployment situation growing so acute as to cause grave fears of attempted revolution, women by the hundreds are further complicating affairs by adding their numbers to the ranks of labor, employed, unemployed, or striking as the case may be.

We heard nothing of the numbers of women who could not find work before the war. They were all busy apparently and fairly well satisfied. Who is doing the work they left to fill the places of men who went into the army, or is that work undone?

It would be interesting to know, and it seems strange that while statistics are being prepared and investigations made of every subject under the sun, no one has compiled the records of "The Jobs Women Left or Women's Work Undone."

Laura Ingalls Wilder