Susan Ware

Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s

(Twayne Publishers, 1982)

Part of a well-respected series edited by Barbara Haber surveying women's experiences decade by decade across the twentieth century, this book provides a lively overview of the often unrecognized contributions and experiences of American women during the Great Depression. Women survived the 1930s in far better shape than had previously been suggested, making small gains in almost every arena during the decade and large gains in some, notably in the New Deal. Instead of a bleak and desolate time for women, the 1930s emerge as a rich, if sometimes contradictory, period of twentieth-century women's history.