The Infinite Dividend: The WPA · Episode 9 of 13 · 41 min
Sewing Rooms and Human Computers: The Women and White-Collar WPA
The WPA was largely a program for men, yet it became the largest federal employer of women, about 450,000 of them. Most ended up in sewing rooms after administrators rejected nearly all of Ellen Woodward's proposed job categories. Above that ceiling, white-collar projects inventoried the nation's archives and ran a room of human computers.
Who's who
- Ellen S. Woodward+1 more episodeDirector of the WPA's Women's and Professional Division
- Harry Hopkins+10 more episodesWPA administrator who presided over the system
- Gertrude BlanchMathematician who directed the Mathematical Tables Project's computations
- Arnold LowanPhysicist who headed the Mathematical Tables Project
- Luther EvansDirected the Historical Records Survey; later Librarian of Congress
Where it happens
- New York City, New York+3 more episodesHome of the Mathematical Tables Project
Timeline
- May 6, 1935Executive Order 7034 creates the WPA and its Women's and Professional Division
- 1935-1936Woodward proposes about 250 job categories for women; nearly all are rejected
- July 1936The Historical Records Survey spins off from the Federal Writers' Project
- 1938Women in the WPA peak near 600,000; the Mathematical Tables Project launches with about 450 human computers
- 1939-1943The WPA is renamed and wound down; project expertise carries into wartime computation
Still debated
Historians generally place the confinement of women on the relief rule and administrators rather than on Woodward, though that is a judgment. The Math Tables workforce was a mix of trained staff and relief workers, and calling it the ancestor of programming oversimplifies.
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