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• 1 media/Rowe_R_Godeys_fashionplate_2.jpg 2024-04-09T21:16:54-07:00 Godey's Lady's Book (1860) 15 plain 2024-05-24T11:05:46-07:00 Godey's Lady's Book was a women's magazine published between 1830 and 1896 in the United States. It had a large readership, and several issues are held in the Rare Book Room in the library of Saint Mary's College. One such issue owned by Saint Mary's is Volume LX, which was published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in January 1860 by Louis A. Godey.
  
  Godey's Lady's Book regularly included features such as patterns for sewing, recipes, short stories, news, health advice, and the latest fashion trends--not unlike a modern magazine. The magazine was particularly well-known for the hand-colored fashion plates showing contemporary fashion styles. These fashion plates created work for 150 women hand-tinters, who used tools like cotton swabs to apply pigment to an image (https://www.uvm.edu/~hag/godey/glbpub.html; https://www.doi.gov/interiormuseum/awash-color-interior-museums-hand-tinted-photographs). 
  
  In addition to creating employment for women, Godey's Lady's Book also advocated for employment and education opportunities for women and covered women's health concerns. For example, on page 468 of Vol. LX, the magazine discusses the New England Woman's Medical College, promoting women's medical education and remarking on the great success of Mrs. Goodwin, a female physician, in safely delivering babies. The magazine posits that having more female physicians would lead to less suffering in childbirth, and suggests that more women should be educated in medicine and women's health, a similar goal to the pamphlet Our Bodies Our Selves, which came about around 100 years later with the aim of educating women on their bodies and health. 
  
  Despite these early successes in the feminist movement in the U.S., we can see in modern times how women are still fighting for equality in the workplace. At the time Godey's Lady's Book was published, women were campaigning to have access to careers in prestigious fields like medicine and law; today, even though women legally have access to these jobs, there are still many barriers women face in the workplace. These barriers affect the ability of women to obtain high-paid and high-prestige careers and positions in their chosen fields. For example, because women are typically responsible for a larger share of childcare and household work than men, women have less time and energy to devote to their careers. Employers also commonly assume that women, especially mothers, are unable or unwilling to move up in their careers, and may place women on what is known as the "mommy track," which denies them access to promotions. This reality is easily seen by noting how few women are in positions such as CEO. The fight for equality in the workplace has thus shifted, but is a continuation of the struggle women in the 19th and 20th centuries faced, and it is useful to understand how they overcame the obstacles in order to continue to pursue equity for women in the workplace.