the Female Body GOVERNING

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kristin a. swenson
consumer items including the new technological household appliances
(Weiss, 2000).
Howard Kaltenborn at the 1957 National Manpower Council meeting
explained the rationale behind hiring married women:
These older women, as a group, constitute the least effectively utilized
sector of our working population. [We] will [have] to employ them in
increasing numbers in business, industry, and government in order
to meet the nation’s manpower needs and to insure the continued
prosperity and growth of our national economy. (cited in Blackwelder,
1997, p. 161)
Kaltenborn recognized that married women were an untapped paid
labor force and could be subsumed readily into labor, exploited as parttime
wage earners. The recognition that this previously untapped source
for wage labor was ripe for exploitation was not lost on employers. As
the National Manpower Council advocated the hiring of female laborers
for part-time work, its members touted the benefi ts of hiring married
part-time workers by explaining that they could easily be laid off during
an economic downturn and rehired during growth periods. Part-time
work and fl exible work schedules exploited the previously untapped
female labor force while saving employers a signifi cant amount in wages
and benefi ts (see Blackwelder, 1997, pp. 162–163). 8
During the 1960s the number of wage earning women increased from
“23 million to well over 31 million, and female labor force participation
increased from 37.7% to 43.3%” (Blackwelder, 1997, p. 177). Women
entered the wage-earning labor force in increasing numbers, but unlike
the 1950s, middle-class and working-class mothers maintained a constant
relationship to wage labor, and many, including mothers with infants and
toddlers, accepted full-time employment (see Blackwelder, 1997; Jenson
et al., 1988). During the 1960s and 1970s, the labor demand expanded
and women continued to fi ll the needs of the growing economic and
services industry. Regardless of class and family status, more women were
seeking employment out of economic need as the cost of living continued
to rise. By the 1970s, the services industry surpassed manufacturing
and by the 1980s services-sector jobs accounted for 65% of the national
income (Blackwelder, 1997, p. 6). The labor market was in continual
need of services-sector employees and because services positions were
traditionally segregated as women’s work, and as women’s fi nancial
status required the necessity to earn a wage to support themselves and
to contribute to their families, women were further ingrained into the
labor force.