Women’s Work / Men’s Work: Labor and Gender in America

January 20–April 25, 2010
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum @ 10975 SW 17th Street

Until recent years, most Americans believed that entirely different kinds of work were appropriate for men and women. A “man’s job” demanded strength and skill and helped build the nation’s wealth and power; ideal “women’s work” meant caretaking, usually confined to the private realm of the household and family. This division became challenged in the first half of the twentieth century, when women joined the paid workforce in growing numbers due to wartime labor shortages, changes in consumption and technology, and the rise of assembly lines and office work stripping men’s work of much of its previous character. These new realities collided with deeply-set notions of proper gender roles, but did not eliminate them.

As American artists turned increasingly to labor as a subject matter, they offered views of work that expressed ideas about gender. An installation of Wolfsonian collection objects at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Women’s Work / Men’s Work presented American art, propaganda, and advertising from the 1890s through the Second World War to consider how images of working people could reinforce or erode the idea that women and men are suited by nature for different jobs.

Women’s Work / Men’s Work: Labor and Gender in America was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-curated by Alex Lichtenstein, FIU Department of History, and Jonathan Mogul, The Wolfsonian–FIU, with the help of FIU undergraduate students.