Interview with Georgia Smith, History 150 Spring 2023, Conducted by Brady Noblin, March 14th, 2024.

Overview to Social Change Interview:

During World War II women had to take on many different jobs as men were sent away to war to fight for our country. Women took over factory jobs and businesses, and this helped the future change that would come later on with female stereotypes. Before this, women were expected to be housewives, tend to the children, and do house chores while their husbands worked for money. Around this time the baby boom also occurred, which meant a lot more children were being born. This was another reason women needed to “stay at home” in order to take care of all the children. Big families were very common around this time and the war only made it harder for women. Once the men returned after the war ended, things went back to how they were and men took over the jobs they had previously left.

Thankfully today, women can have any job they desire and there are very few stereotypes around what women can and can’t do. Social change has come a long way to help out with this stereotype and has successfully decreased the issue almost fully. Georgia was born right at the end of the war and grew up seeing the stereotypes that were also around before the war. In this interview, Georgia speaks on what it was like to be a woman growing up post war and how certain things affected what she did based on her gender. She highlights important aspects and thoughts that she had as she grew up as a woman. It is important to be educated on the past so these stereotypes never happen again in the future.

Biography:

Georgia was born on April 4th, 1945, and grew up in Pamplin, Virginia. She grew up in a large family and had twelve siblings, sadly, two did not make it past birth. Georgia would work on the farm and attend school for most of her schooling years. Days would consist of her getting home from school, helping around the house or farm, and doing homework. Since her family had to keep the farm going, she did not have a job in high school and continued to work on the farm these four years as well. In high school, she met her husband through a friend when she wanted to go to a dance. After high school, she did not attend college, instead, she went to work at a bank in her town around the age of 20. When she first began working, she was only able to work in the office as that was all that women were allowed to do at the time. That ended up changing in two years and women were allowed to hold any position in the bank. At this time she also married her current boyfriend at 22. Her husband worked for the Virginia Highway department and they settled down in Farmville, Virginia. They had one child and lived in very small house with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. They both kept their jobs and raised their son as an only child. Once their son moved out, they moved to a bigger home in Farmville where she still lives to to this day. This is her life and what she had to face to become the person she is today.

Research:

Women born in the 20th century faced adversity with jobs and roles in the community. Throughout these decades women were only allowed to have certain jobs, they would struggle to ever earn a promotion, and were simply seen as housewives. A lot of these women did not even get the chance to attend college. Woman went through many changes in the workforce and in everyday lives throughout this century.

Women had to keep society running while men were away at war. One of the main things they had to do was take over jobs mostly done by men. As more men left, women would slide into factory jobs and higher positions to keep businesses and other places up and running. Georgia was quite young when all of this was going, but she was able to even see it in her own life. She would work on the farm everyday after school doing an abundant amount of chores. Likewise to the war, when the men were not around the house, the women of her household had to take up those extra chores to keep the house and farm running.

Throughout this time women were stereotyped extremely hard. In the 1950’s advertisements, educational films, and television shows all showed women as stay at home moms who did all the cooking, cleaning, and children care. This made it seem like it was expected for women to stay in the house and do those things. Georgia was able to see this in her home as well because the women of the household would do majority of chores inside the house. She was also expected to help on the farm, but the men of the house did more outside.

In this time the baby boom was also happening. This was the point in the time where the most children were being born in history. Many people believed the baby boom happened because peace and prosperity returned to the US. According to American historian Elaine Tyler May, the baby boom was caused by the depression everyone was feeling due to the war. Therefore, many people turned to making families as a sense of safety and belonging. Georgia was also able to see this through her family. She had twelve other siblings and she was very close with them. Likely, her parents had this many children for the exact reason stated above.

Even as Georgia grew up, women were still now allowed certain things. When she began working in the bank, women were still not allowed to be loan officers or presidents at the bank. On the upside, this changed after her first two years at the bank and women were able to hold these positions in the work force. She even mentions her female friends that holds the vice president spot of that bank to this day. The way women were viewed and stereotyped shaped Georgia into who she is today. A lot has changed in the workforce and roles around women, and change will continue to happen in the future.

Transcript:

Brady Noblin 0:00
Hi. I’m Brady Noblin. And today I’ll be interviewing my grandma on gender roles and how her gender affected her life growing up. Alrighty, so grandma, where did you grow up? And how big was your family?

Grandma 0:15
Well, I grew up in Pamplin in 1945. And that was the year that world war two ended. And my family, my mother had 13 children. Two passed away, two passed away at birth. But I was the youngest of all of those children.

Brady Noblin 0:37
Gotcha. All right. And growing up, what were your views on being a woman? Or what did it mean to you?

Grandma 0:44
Well, I didn’t have many views. Back then you just, you just did what you was told and, and get to go to school and get a good education and get a job.

Brady Noblin 0:59
Gotcha. All righty. And did your family have any any views on you being a woman or that did that affect how you grew up? Or Not really?

Grandma 1:08
Well, we all worked on a farm. And farm life is not easy. It didn’t matter whether you was a boy or a girl, because if a boy could wasn’t there to do it, the girls had to do it. And doing farm chores, was hard because we work from sunup to sundown, in the back of fields. And, and they had cows had to be milked, and get up hay and drive the tractor to help do all that. So.

Brady Noblin 1:45
So when you know, the boys were there, it was the girls job. Like, typically the boys would do it? Or would you all work on if you were all there.

Grandma 1:55
Well the boys, the boys were older than me. So they were doing it and the girls at that age could do the housework like cooking, washing, clothes, cleaning and that sort of thing.

Brady Noblin 2:12
You can go sorry.

Grandma 2:14
Then once the boys left with the girls had to still do the cooking and cleaning and washing clothes and then go on farm and helping Dad do the work that had to be done on the farm. So we had to do both. Boys work and girls work.

Brady Noblin 2:33
All righty. And then how did how did being a woman affect your home and school life? I know you just told me that you guys had to do the cooking, the cleaning and all those house all the housework. But did it affect your school life at all?

Grandma 2:50
Well yes, it did. Because for myself, I didn’t have that much time for go to bed to get my homework done. So I didn’t. I didn’t do that well in school. But we still had to do our chores before we could do our homework. And one thing in school, if uh, if the girl got pregnant in school. She they had to drop out of school. They could not go to school.

Brady Noblin 3:22

Really?

Grandma 3:23

Yes. And so that was something different than now. Because it just wasn’t tolerated. You just didn’t do it. So we had to behave ourselves in school and respect that teachers or we would get get it when we got home.

Brady Noblin 3:41
That’s crazy. I didn’t know that. All right. And then did being a woman affect the job you had in high school if you had one. I know you said I don’t think you got a job in high school. But you did work on the farm.

Grandma 3:54
Well, I didn’t have a job my brother did. You could do DE or DO class and you could go to school half a day and work half a day. But I didn’t get to do that. So I didn’t have a job. But in the summertime. You know, most students could get a job in a summer. But we weren’t able to do that in the summer because of so much work to do on a farm.

Brady Noblin 4:22
Understand I got that. All right. And then to follow up that question, did being a woman affect your career choice? And then what was it like being a woman in the workforce and in the job that you took upon for your life.

Grandma 4:34
Well, I don’t think it had an effect on my choice of a job. Because I never thought about doing a man’s job like working on a highway or something mechanical or cars or whatever. So much working at the department store was all women really, except two men in the mens department, and I worked in the office, which was women. So I didn’t think about if, you know, being a woman had an effect on me in job. But when I went to the bank at that time, when I went in 1968, I went to work at the bank. And it hadn’t changed to where women were managers and presidents of the bank. And we did most of the teller work and bookkeeping. I did, and the other women was doing the same thing. And even loan officers were men. But in a year or two, that all changed because we had women managers, we had women, loan officers. And even today we have I have a friend who’s vice president of the bank that I worked in.

Brady Noblin 6:00
Oh wow, so when you when you first started working, there was there was just certain like roles in the job .

Grandma 6:07
women had a certain thing to do, and a man had a certain thing to do.

Brady Noblin 6:14
Then that changed, though, after a year or two, you said.

Grandma 6:16
Yes, in a year or two, it changed greatly. I mean, women were doing everything in the bank.

Brady Noblin 6:23
That’s awesome. And then lastly, in general, is there anything you felt like you could not do being a woman? Or that you’ve that if you did a certain thing you would have been looked down upon?

Grandma 6:34
Well, I never really thought about what I could or couldn’t do. But if you just didn’t do what men usually do, I mean, you just didn’t think about it. You’re just working on a highway, you might have worked in an in the office part. But you didn’t do manually work like men did. And did we just weren’t strong enough to do that kind of work.

Brady Noblin 7:06
Yeah. And it was just it wasn’t more some of you thought about is just kind of a natural thing that just comes.

Grandma 7:10

It was a natural thing.

Brady Noblin 7:11

It was just normal. Got ya. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time.

Grandma 7:16
You’re welcome.

Technology and process:

This interview was conducted online and recorded on Zoom. To prepare for this interview I started off with thinking of a good subject to base it on. I then contacted my grandma to see if she would like to do the interview with me. Once she agreed, I started to do my research and formulate questions. Next, I set up a time and date to do the interview with my Grandma. Once that was completed, I had to transcribe my interview. I did this on otter.ai, which is a very easy to use transcription site that puts an interview audio into words. Lastly, I made any small changes and edits to the transcription.

Bibliography:

Brosh, Liora. “Consuming women: The representation of women in the 1940 adaptation of pride and prejudice.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 17 (2000): 147 – 159.

Peer Reviewed

“History at a Glance: Women in World War II: The National WWII Museum: New Orleans.” The National WWII Museum | New Orleans, www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/women-wwii.

This site discusses what women did while men were away at war and how they helped the war efforts. Women would take office and nursing jobs in the forces to help free up more men to be able to fight.