Rationale for passage
Protection of women was a rationale for the enactment of the laws. Women were considered more vulnerable than men in factories and sweatshops, and one supporter of the laws was the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, a labor organization, which supported the laws for nonmembers of unions. [5] Some supporters in unions and women's organizations, concerned that courts in the 1950s would oppose pro-labor legislation generally, wanted to preserve whatever such laws were already in place. [7] By 1972, however, the year the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution passed the Congress and was proposed to the states for ratification, unions supported the ERA and considered female-only protective laws as against women's interests. [8]
Another rationale was put forth by an organization which, in 1836, adopted a resolution that said, "Whereas, Labor is a physical and moral injury to women and a competitive menace to men, we recommend legislation to restrict women in industry." [9]
The minimum wage was supported except for men because of "widespread agreement that the labor market did not function effectively where women and the family were concerned" [10] and among feminists because women needed to support their own dependents. [10]
Criticisms
They were criticized on several grounds.
- They failed to require protection from the hazards or difficulties for all workers who needed those protections.
- They denied jobs to women who did not need the protections at all or needed the jobs more than the protections and could make that choice.
- Many denied jobs rather than required changes, either at the workplaces or elsewhere, that would have reduced any reason for protection.
- Few, if any, of these laws applied to women's unpaid work at home or with families, which could be more hazardous or difficult than some of the restricted employments.
- Some women may have advocated for such laws, but many were put into effect when women did not have the vote or the right to hold electoral office, [3] so the people ultimately responsible for legislating them were almost exclusively men, and they were responding to voters who were men.
- The laws disincentivized employers from hiring women.
Protective labor laws were criticized because they excluded women from prestigious well-paid male-dominated occupations, and they confined women's work to the home, thus reinforcing Separate Spheres ideology and the Cult of Domesticity. [1]
An opponent of these laws was the National Woman's Party (NWP), which led support for the Equal Rights Amendment. It opposed the laws as interfering with women's right to make contracts and as preventing them from offering their full capabilities at work, objecting, for example, to a 20-pound limit on lifting, if a woman wanted that job and could lift the weight. [5]
Modernity
Eventually, most or all were amended, repealed, ruled unconstitutional (i.e., in violation of the US Constitution and thus invalid), or not enforced anymore because they singled women out for unequal treatment. (Laws in the US may not be enforced if they are unconstitutional or otherwise unauthorized in law.) Had the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution been enacted in the 1970s or the 1980s, it was believed the laws would have been invalidated by the amendment and subsequent litigation [5] and, as a result, most liberal organizations opposed the amendment. [5] The laws had earlier been supported by social feminists for decades. [5]
Some of the laws have been replaced by laws that apply to both genders, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
An argument for protective laws still sometimes arises, as with debates over the US military's continuing legal ban on women in certain combat positions, when it is argued that the ban should remain in effect because women might be killed or raped.
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. The first version of an ERA was written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in December 1923.
Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. Women were provided by state mandate lesser work-hours than allotted to men. The posed question was whether women's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's. The law did not recognize sex-based discrimination in 1908; it was unrecognized until the case of Reed v. Reed in 1971; here, the test was not under the equal protections clause, but a test based on the general police powers of the state to protect the welfare of women when it infringed on her fundamental right to negotiate contracts; inequality was not a deciding factor because the sexes were inherently different in their particular conditions and had completely different functions; usage of labor laws that were made to nurture women's welfare and for the "benefit of all" people was decided to be not a violation of the Constitution's Contract Clause.
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The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NWP advocated for other issues including the Equal Rights Amendment. The most prominent leader of the National Woman's Party was Alice Paul, and its most notable event was the 1917–1919 Silent Sentinels vigil outside the gates of the White House. As of January 1, 2021, NWP has ceased operations as its own independent non-profit and has assigned its trademark rights and other uses of the party's name to the Alice Paul Institute. The Alice Paul Institute has invited three members of NWP Board of Directors to join their board and in the near future will created a new committee to "advise on a potential expansion of programs to the Washington, DC area and nationally".
The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) (1903–1950) was a U.S. organization of both working class and more well-off women to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop conditions. The WTUL played an important role in supporting the massive strikes in the first two decades of the twentieth century that established the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and in campaigning for women's suffrage among men and women workers.
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