Women’s Work: Section 213 and the Women Fired from the Federal Government

In 1932, the Great Depression was well underway, unemployment rates were rising, and Congress was cutting federal spending to try to balance the budget.

At the start of the Depression, President Herbert Hoover focused on local- and state-led relief efforts. But by 1932, with elections looming over the presidency and Congress, politicians were desperate for more dramatic action. This culminated in the Economy Act of 1932, which sought to reduce government expenses through measures such as limiting vacation leave and cutting pensions for certain retirees. Section 213, though, specifically targeted what members of Congress thought was wasteful spending: two-income households in federal employment. Hoover, despite his stated opposition to the clause, signed the act into law, initiating the dismissals.

Given societal norms that cast men as primary breadwinners, the vast majority of those fired under Section 213 were women. (While the final legislation did not specify that wives must be the fired partner, its original draft did, as historian Rebecca DeWolf notes.) Their numbers totaled between 1,600 and 1,800.

Less than six months later, Hoover himself was out of a job. In the November 1932 election, Americans overwhelmingly supported Franklin Roosevelt and his proposed “New Deal for America.” With his administration’s arrival, opponents of Section 213 renewed their efforts to challenge the policy, arguing that it unfairly targeted women without addressing broader economic concerns.

A month before Roosevelt’s inauguration, members of the National Woman’s Party gathered in Washington, D.C. to speak out against the “Married Workers’ Clause.” Jessie Dell, the United States Civil Service Commissioner, argued that Section 213 harmed both families and the federal government. Firing women did not create new jobs for men; instead, the positions were eliminated and the money just went back to the government’s coffers. Anna Kelton Wiley, president of Washington, D.C.’s Federation of Women’s Clubs, criticized Congress for appearing fearful of women in the workplace. Because women were just a small proportion of all workers, she found it absurd that legislators targeted them. Members of Congress seemed to be blaming women for taking jobs that could have gone to men.

While women were a minority in the workforce, their presence was growing. In 1930, just over 22 percent of all workers were women, a 100 percent increase from 1920. Married women were also more likely to work than a decade earlier, comprising more than 27 percent of all women workers in 1930. And yet, in 1932 women comprised just 15 percent of the total federal workforce.

Before 1932, the federal government was one place where women could continue to work after marriage. Federal law made this possible, even though many women faced “marriage bars” from other employers in the early 20^th century. These policies meant that once married, a woman was required to quit her job. Marriage bars were not always strictly enforced, depending on hiring needs, but the Great Depression brought new scrutiny to women’s employment.

In 1933, Roosevelt took office with many new ideas about how to handle the Great Depression. His New Deal aimed to expand government intervention, but did not include any plans to remove Section 213. Just 12 days after his inauguration, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) spoke out once more against Section 213. Speaking on the radio, Secretary-Treasurer Esther Penn demanded an employment standard “not based on sex or marital status.” AFGE President E. Claude Babcock called Section 213 “foolish,” questioning whether it was a crime for spouses to support each other and their families financially.

Women found hope in Roosevelt’s administration. He appointed Frances Perkins Secretary of Labor, the first-ever female cabinet member. Women federal employees soon turned to Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt for support.

But Perkins limited her support for working women. She spoke out against women who worked only to enrich themselves: “The woman ‘pin-money worker’ who competes with the necessity worker is a menace to society,” Perkins said, “a selfish, shortsighted creature, who ought to be ashamed of herself.” Perkins herself had long worked out of necessity, and certainly supported women in similar positions, but she did not trust that all married women needed their income.

Initially, Perkins believed that Section 213 wasn’t even being enforced, but she soon learned she was wrong. Under Roosevelt, the Adjutant General’s office fired 45 married women, all with dependents. In 1934, Helena Hill Weed of the National Woman’s Party highlighted the devastating impact: These women lost “not only their incomes, but the right to reappointment and to a civil pension, toward which they had been contributing for years.” They were seen as expendable because they “have husbands to support them,” an official explained. According to Weed, at least 1,600 women lost their government jobs — a loss that affected more than 4,000 dependents.

Doris Holmes Blake was just one of the many women whose livelihoods — and families — were upended by Section 213. In her 14 years in the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Entomology, few women had advanced as she had. Blake had a master’s degree from Radcliffe and had published three papers within a decade. When she married, it was clear that she needed to continue to work. As she wrote to the Secretary of Agriculture, her husband “was earning less than $2,000 a year and had a dependent mother and father.” By 1930, Blake’s parents also needed support, and as the Great Depression worsened, Blake’s husband was starting to send money to “an old childless aunt and uncle of his who have lost even their home in this depression.”

As Blake’s letter to the Secretary of Agriculture makes clear, firing women federal employees had far-ranging consequences for the women and their families. Many had home loans that relied on two incomes, and they lost those homes when they could no longer pay. Others tried to separate or even divorce, all in the hopes of keeping their jobs. Some couples took even more drastic measures. Helena Hill Weed reported that, in defiance of the government’s demand to choose between marriage and employment, some federal workers lived together unmarried. Journalist Louise E. Whyte, writing in The Washington Times in August of 1934, cited a new AFGE poll that found Section 213 led to an increase in divorces between married federal employees.

Ultimately, the U.S Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau found that 75 percent of those forced out under Section 213 were women, disproportionately those earning under $2,000 per year (about $45,800 today). Nearly 500 more individuals resigned to prevent a spouse’s job loss. Most job losses came from three government departments: Treasury, Veterans Administration, and Commerce. These were the early results of what Jessie Dell called “the greatest sin committed in the name of economy — this thrust at the foundation of the home.”

In 1937, as Congress finally considered repealing Section 213, Mary Dewson, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, prepared to testify. She dismissed Section 213 as “merely a gesture,” arguing that in the vast landscape of federal employment, the roughly 1,800 jobs affected were a drop in the bucket. But the true harm, she contended, was not in the numbers — it was in the precedent. By prioritizing marital status over merit, Section 213 undermined the very foundation of civil service. “Were or were not these Government employees appointed because they were well qualified for their work?” she asked. “If so, why should one of the most normal acts of life, marriage, disqualify them?” The policy, she concluded, had created “great unforeseen hardships” for workers and their families, disrupting lives while doing little to ease the unemployment crisis it was meant to address.

On July 9, 1937, after years of relentless advocacy, women in Congress helped strike down Section 213, ending a policy that had cost thousands of women their jobs — and, for many, their financial stability. But the forces behind Section 213 never disappeared. Then, as now, those in power have justified mass job cuts by claiming they serve the “greater good,” while ordinary workers pay the price. Today, as sweeping government layoffs once again threaten the livelihoods of thousands, the same flawed logic is being used to decide who is expendable. The fight against Section 213 was won, but the battle over who gets to work — and who gets cast aside — is far from over.