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The Art of Maintaining a Household: All Purchases are Carefully Recorded (1950)
After the war, women were gradually pushed out of “male jobs,” and by 1950 the female employment rate had fallen to 44.4 percent as compared with 49.8 percent in 1939. This drop reflected the prevailing ideals of the 1950s and the reintroduction of conservative ideas about gender roles and the family. Men were now once again the breadwinners, and their wives were to stay home and devote themselves to managing the household and raising the children. In 1950, only one-fourth of all married women were employed, and of these, nearly 62 percent helped out in family-run businesses (primarily in agriculture). But the percentage of adult women who were married had dropped due to divorce, being widowed, and the relative shortage of men. Photo by Gerd Mingram [Germin].