WorkLore: Women Breaking Barriers

Home Sweet…Workplace

Some Brooklyn women are homemakers. Some are wage-earners. A great many are both. Women have done paid work at home for generations, coping with the complexity of taking care of business while taking care of a family. In the past (and often still), workers at home were paid by what they produced, not by the hours worked.

Today, technology increasingly brings the corporate office into the Brooklyn home. More than 20,000 Brooklynites now work from home — at least half of them women.

'Although my work day is shortened, it's concentrated. No office politics to interrupt my focus, and no travel time. I work on a web site and direct mail solicitations for a Manhattan theater company. It can be challenging to get my work done with a toddler underfoot.'

Katie Langwell Working at Home
2002
Courtesy of Martha Cooper

'I and my four children work all day separating the petals of artificial flowers. To earn 60¢ a day we must make six dozen wreaths of daisies. My little girl, Angelina, said, 'I like school better than home. I don't like home. There's too many flowers.'

Artificial Flower Makers
1908
Lewis W. Hine
Courtesy of George Eastman House

Chart showing % of Women in Brooklyn's Workforce going from 21% in 1880 to 47% in 1990

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Pauline Newman, Minutes of Public Hearings from the Fourth Report of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission, February 15, 1919.

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