Item #19140 How Women Can Make Money, Married or Single, In All Branches of the Arts and Sciences, Professions, Trades, Agricultural and Mechanical Pursuits. WOMEN, Virginia Penny.
How Women Can Make Money, Married or Single, In All Branches of the Arts and Sciences, Professions, Trades, Agricultural and Mechanical Pursuits

How Women Can Make Money, Married or Single, In All Branches of the Arts and Sciences, Professions, Trades, Agricultural and Mechanical Pursuits

Springfield, MA: D.E. Fisk & Company, [1870].

Small 8vo, pp. xiv, [2], 500, xvii- xxiii, [2] (ads) + 14 wood-engraved plates showing women engaged in various occupations. Publisher's green cloth lettered in gilt on the spine. A good copy, sound and internally clean, but with silverfish damage and light soiling to the boards, corners rubbed through. Originally self-published in 1862, this was one of the first books to offer women detailed, practical advice on how to earn a living. Penny (1826-1913) gave up her teaching job to spend three years systematically researching the book, interviewing thousands of workers and employers in person and via mail-in questionnaires. The result was a compendium of more than five hundred occupations available to women of all educational and skill levels, with details on the work involved, salary (and gender differentials in pay), qualifications needed, length of working day, potential health effects, and prospects for advancement for each job. Among the jobs described: reporter, swimming teacher, dentist, translator, wax figure modeler, colorist, newspaper agent, snuff packer, bill poster, tavern keeper, traveling companion, baker, cheesemaker, florist, bookkeeper, taxidermist, map engraver, physician, editor, and, of course, author. Penny also wrote Think and Act: A Series of Articles Pertaining to Men and Women, Work and Wages (1869), which offered further analysis of the labor market and the problem of gender discrimination, and went on to operate an employment agency for women and to lecture widely in support of women's wage equality and voting rights.

Item #19140

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