American pride and the overwhelming numbers of poor, Catholic Irish immigrants, with a believed propensity for drinking, entering New York City in the 19th century created blatant discrimination against the Irish (1). These beliefs were not always founded, but they were widely held. Irish men and women both fell victim to this discrimination, though the discrimination against women was twofold: gender and ethnicity prevented these women from holding an occupation in order to support themselves. While many Irish men eventually found labor intensive jobs, women were still barred from the few economic opportunities available to them.
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| Irish Women Seeking Employment |
This led women to hold jobs that placed them into dangerous, unsanitary, and poor conditions, but the, "...ability to make money was important to single Irish women: the reason was twofold, to help the family by adding to its income and to be independent financially" (2). The choices women made in regards to their occupations were not choices at all; women took advantage of any job that was available to them.
Alongside sexism and discrimination against the Irish, women were forced to compete for the very few occupations that were available to them. The primary occupation available to them was domestic service due to the fact that many women, particularly American women, viewed it as, "...the worst possible form of employment," that was beneath them and often threatened the traditional structure of family life (3). For single Irish female immigrants who had no family to support and were desperate for any occupation, domestic service did not hold the same stigmas for them as other women.
Women arriving in America during the famine-era often lacked skills required to be seamstresses or other jobs requiring specific skills and they resorted to working in the domestic sphere as, "...housekeepers, nurses, chambermaids, charwomen, laundresses, cooks, and waitresses...," (4). These jobs, though they required long hours, paid better and often provided the women with housing, keeping them out of the slums. However, before women could enter the sphere of domesticity, they had to be accepted.
Help wanted ads, such as the following:
No Irish Need Apply Ad. New York Times. May 10, 1859.
barred Irish women from even applying for a job, relegating them to poor paying and dangerous jobs, but because New York was the home to numerous private homes, mansions, hotels, and boarding houses, the demand was high and Irish women were able to break into the domestic sphere (5).
Though life in domesticity was better than prostitution, low paying jobs, or no job at all, the Irish women still faced, "...a hard grind that involved unpleasantness" in domestic life (6). Hannah Collins, an Irish immigrant domestic, wrote in a letter to a friend, "I am working every day and feels tired I don t have them Idle times like I used to in Old Ballinlough, " (7). Women, like Collins, were expected to be a, "maid-of-all-work", who was, "...required to set the table, cook and serve the main meal of the day, answer the front door, respond to her employer when called, and run general errands," (8). Women were given very little time to themselves and were working to sustain the lives of the family they worked for, as well as support themselves. During this period in America, no job was easy. Added stressors, such as being a woman facing discrimination in a new home, prevented Irish immigrants from having an easy time assimilating within the culture.
In 1862, John Poole, wrote a song that personified the struggle for Irish immigrants to find jobs upon arriving in America. His song, No Irish Need Apply, told the story of an Irish male immigrant attempting to apply for a job, but being denied due to his ethnicity. While this song is a testimony to the hardships faced by the Irish, it also leaves out women from the job search. They were actively involved in the workforce and faced the same discrimination as men. Not only were they not recognized by society due to their gender and ethnicity, their own men in their lives blatantly ignored the hardships both genders shared when applied to women, proving how little they were valued.
Image Source:
Unknown, "Employment Office, 1866". In Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century. By Hasia R. Diner. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1983, 81.
Sources:
1. Phalen, William. "The Stalwart Ladies: Nineteenth Century Female Irish Emigrants to the United States". Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 92, 2003, 186.
2. Ibid, 183.
3. Diner, Hasia R. Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1983, 80.
4. Ibid, 186.
5. Ibid.
6. Lynch-Brennan, Margaret. "Ubiquitous Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America, 1840-1930. In Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States. Edited by J. J. Lee and Marion R. Casey. New York: New York University Press, 2006, 338.
7. Collins, Hannah. "Letter to Nora McCarthy, June 9, 1898". New York, 1898. In "Ubiquitous Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America, 1840-1930. By Margaret Lynch-Brennan. In Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States. Edited by J. J. Lee and Marion R. Casey. New York: New York University Press, 2006, 338.
8. Ibid.
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