WOMEN'S BUREAU

WOMEN'S BUREAU was officially organized within the Department of Labor in 1920 to investigate and report on the conditions of working women. Its direct antecedent was the Women-in-Industry Service that had been established in 1918 to advise the Department on wartime labor standards for working women. As a bureau inside the federal government, the Women's Bureau does not initiate legislation nor does it have any oversight or enforcement capabilities. Its charge is to formulate standards and policies to promote the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment. Mary Anderson, a shoeworker and organizer for the Women's Trade Union League in Chicago, was the first head of the Bureau, a position she held until 1944.

As a government office, the Women's Bureau became the official clearinghouse for collecting statistics on working women. In this capacity it performed the work done previously by voluntary, non-government groups such as the National Consumers' League (NCL). From its inception, the Bureau worked closely with the National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL) to promote equal pay, minimum wage, and maximum-hours legislation; and worked toward eliminating night work and employment in dangerous industries. For decades, the Bureau also led an informal women's coalition that included the NCL, NWTUL, YWCA, the National Councils of Jewish, Catholic, and Negro Women, the League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women, and women's affiliates in the AFL and CIO. Working together as a coalition, these women's organizations made considerable progress during the New Deal era in bettering conditions and industrial protections for working women. The Bureau played a key role in passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Since Anderson's tenure, fourteen women have headed the Bureau. These directors have included African American, Hispanic, and Asian American women. They have been union organizers and business and professional women. Under their leadership, the Women's Bureau has continued to pursue the charge it was given in 1920. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy elevated the status of the director of the Women's Bureau to Assistant Secretary of Labor.

The Bureau has participated in the International Labor Organization. It led the successful drive to have President Kennedy establish his Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. Since the 1960s, the Women's Bureau has lobbied for the Equal Pay Act of 1963, created employment initiatives for young and low-income women, and directed attention to the special needs of minority women. In 1982, the bureau initiated a drive to encourage employer-sponsored day care facilities, and in the 1990s worked for passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. In 1999, the Bureau established a National Resource and Information Center to make information on issues concerning women more accessible to working women, as well as to their families and employers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harrison, Cynthia. On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945–1968. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Storrs, Landon R.Y. Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

The Women's Bureau website is: www.dol.gov/dol/wb.

Maureen A.Flanagan

See alsoNew Deal ; Women's Trade Union League .