New Deal

The New Deal era (1933–39) witnessed a major shift in government control of labor and social policies, with the federal government taking over many responsibilities that were formerly controlled by the individual states. A similar change occurred in the definition of citizenship rights and government responsibilities for providing individual economic security. Growing from conventional notions of men as productive workers and women as providers of child care, New Deal policies protected traditional work- and family-based ideals of masculinity. They reinforced prevailing gender norms despite President Franklin D. Roosevelt's appointment of the first woman to the Cabinet (Frances Perkins as secretary of labor), the presence an unprecedented number of women in administrative posts, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's social activism.

Prior to the 1930s, government and societal attitudes about work and provision for the needy centered on traditional ideas of masculinity and the family. Nineteenth-century working-class men measured their worth by their jobs and their success as family providers; thus, men who failed to hold a job fell short of true manhood. Unemployment relief was the province of the states and private charities, and males who had to rely on such services were held in contempt. State and local welfare policies were limited to the provision of pensions for indigent single mothers and their children. Federal unemployment insurance and old-age assistance programs for breadwinners did not exist.

The Great Depression, beginning in 1929, caused massive unemployment. By 1932 nearly 25 percent of workers were jobless. Americans responded by rearticulating their assumptions concerning the relationship of government to wage work and family life. While most Americans believed that men, as providers, deserved priority in the competition for scarce jobs, public opinion moved from staunch opposition to federal intervention in the economy to a willingness to sanction experiments in government mediation between the marketplace and the work lives of men (but not women). This shift manifested itself in Franklin D. Roosevelt's election as president in 1932, and in the resulting government relief and social programs of the New Deal. The Roosevelt administration's policies addressed the depression's economic dislocations on two levels: They provided short-run work and financial relief for the unemployed and, through long-term national social and labor legislation, created a permanent safety net for American workers.

In implementing these programs, New Deal policymakers based their decisions on gender-based views concerning work and the traditional role of men as family breadwinners. Relief programs were administered through numerous government agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Works Progress Administration. The majority of these work-relief jobs, and the highest paying, involved construction and employed only men. Women, who were restricted to one-sixth of enrollees in federal work relief, held positions that mirrored household chores, such as growing and canning food, or traditionally female occupations, such as secretarial work.

Conventional notions of American manhood were also apparent in federal cultural programs. Administrators of New Deal arts programs cultivated an image of labor that depicted American wageworkers as heroic masculine figures who embodied the work ethic and manifested the manly virtues of strength, individuality, and determination. The post office murals of Leo Raiken depicted the utility of blue-collar drillers, stonecutters, and professional-class engineers and architects, but included few representations of women's work. Such portraits counteracted depression-era worries about the impact of unemployment on the ideal of male breadwinning.

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