1. Women wooed from their role as homemakers
The Gilded Age
Women wooed from their role as homemakers

2. Brainstorm the details that characterized the Gilded Age.
What was the significance of this time period to the evolution of American society, economy and politics?

3. Image of Extravagance
Extravagance of the time was often evident in the women
Appetites
Image of curves
New Invention: Camera
Promoted an iconic female image
Clothing, hats so widely used, caused need for law
Hats made from birds’ feathers so by 1880s needed regulation to protect birds.

4. A More Public Life Celebrity culture Women in cities more visible
Organizations
Political causes
Workers’ rights
Evidence of women’s increasing visibility: men’s groups such as labor responded…

5. Entertainment Targets women..
Restaurants began serving women
Leisure & Entertainment for women
Theatre for families rather than just men

6. …as do businesses Department Stores
Hydraulic elevators
Lounge restrooms
Training of store clerks
Significance: women as primary purchaser.
Women treated with respect regardless of class.
The ad targeted women who were the primary spenders and savers in the family.

7. Professional opportunities and limits
525 of 63,000 physicians were women
Still a man’s world, however….
More options than actress or journalist
dept. store clerks
Switchboard operators
Librarians
Court reporters
Limits:
Class consciousness
Most white women workers were single
African-American community was the one community where married women were accepted as workers

8. Opportunities for independent Thought
Increase in women’s causes
Temperance
Suffrage
Socialism
Anti-child labor
Settlement Houses

9. In what ways had women’s roles changed?
In what ways do these details related to women shift your perceptions of the significance of the Gilded Age?
[Reconsider the opening question: What was the significance of this time period to the evolution of American society, economy and politics?]

10. What were her accomplishments?
Jane Addams
What were her accomplishments?
Why were they notable?

11. Read and Annotate the excerpt on working women and feminism in the late 1800s.
Assignment….