Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:09:23.963Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Rosie the Realtor” and the Re-Gendering of Real Estate Brokerage, 1930–1960

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Jeffrey M. Hornstein
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Rapidly increasing numbers of women entered the field of real estate brokerage from the 1930s through the 1950s. “Rosie the Realtor” took advantage of the postwar building boom to create an expanding career niche, capturing residential brokerage as a female domain. In the process, she stretched gendered boundaries in the masculine world of brokerage to the breaking point. Employing a complex and internally antagonistic mix of liberal feminist and conservative ideologies, female realtors created their own professional space, expanding career opportunities for women at the same time that their economic and political practices reinforced the constraints of domesticity.

Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 2002 , pp. 318 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) (2002). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Anderson, Karen. Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women during World War II. Westport,Conn.,1981.Google Scholar
Beecher, Catherine,and Stowe, Harriet Beecher. The American Woman’s Home, or The Principles of Domestic Science, Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful Beautiful and Christian Homes,1869; Hartford,Conn.,1975.Google Scholar
Campbell, D’Ann. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era. Cambridge, Mass., 1984.Google Scholar
Chafe, William H. The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920-1970. New York, 1972.Google Scholar
Chapralis, Sally Ross. Progress of Women in Real Estate: 50th Anniversary, Women’s Council of Realtors. Chicago, 1988.Google Scholar
Davies, Pearl Janet. Real Estate in American History. Washington,D.C., 1958.Google Scholar
Davies, Pearl Janet. Women in Real Estate: A History of the Women’s Council of the National Association of Real Estate Boards. Chicago, 1963.Google Scholar
Funigiello, Philip J. The Challenge to Urban Liberalism: Federal-City Relations during World War II. Knoxville,Tenn., 1978.Google Scholar
Gluck, Sherna Berger. Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change. Boston, 1987.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia. Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Grebler, Leo, Blank, David and Winnick, Louis. Capital Formation in Residential Real Estate: Trends and Prospects. Princeton,N.J., 1956.Google Scholar
Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities. Cambridge,Mass., 1981.Google Scholar
Honey, Maureen. Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II. Amherst, Mass., 1984.Google Scholar
Hooks, Janet M. Women’s Occupations through Seven Decades. 1947; Washington, D.C., 1978.Google Scholar
Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980.Google Scholar
Kwolek-Folland, Angel. Engendering Business: Men and Women in the Corporate Office, 1870-1930. New York, 1994.Google Scholar
Kwolek-Folland, Angel. Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in the United States. New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Lubove, Roy. The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in New York City, 1890-1917. Westport, Conn., 1974.Google Scholar
Lundberg, Ferdinand, and Farnham, Marynia, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex. New York, 1947.Google Scholar
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Muncy, Robyn. Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 19101935. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Rosalind. Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century. New York, 1992.Google Scholar
Rupp, Leila. Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939-1945. Princeton, N.J., 1978.Google Scholar
Shern, Mary. Real Estate, A Woman’s World: The Saga of Suzy Soldsine, Super Salesperson. Chicago, 1979.Google Scholar
Shook, Robert. The Real Estate People: Top Salespersons, Brokers, and Realtors Share the Secrets of Their Success. New York, 1980.Google Scholar
Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity. New York, 1976.Google Scholar
Strom, Sharon Hartman. Beyond the Typewriter: Gender, Class, and the Origins of Modern American Office Work, 1900-1930. Urbana, Ill., 1992.Google Scholar
Walsh, Andrea S. Women’s Film and Female Experience, 1940-1950. New York, 1984.Google Scholar
Weiss, Marc A. The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning. New York, 1987.Google Scholar
Wright, Gwendolyn. Moralism and the Model Home. Chicago, 1980.Google Scholar
Wylie, Philip. Generation of Vipers. New York,1942.Google Scholar
Berlage, Nancy K. “The Establishment of an Applied Social Science: Home Economists,Science,and Reform at Cornell University,1870-1930.” In Gender and American Social Science: The Formative Years, ed. Silverberg, Helene. Princeton, N.J., 1998, pp. 185–234.Google Scholar
Cott, Nancy F. “What’s in a Name? The Limits of ‘Social Feminism’; or,Ex-panding the Vocabulary of Women’s History.” Journal of American History 76 (Dec. 1989): 809–29Google Scholar
Gordon, Linda. “Single Mothers and Child Neglect, 1880-1920.” American Quarterly 37 (Summer 1985): 173-92.Google Scholar
Gordon, Linda. “Social Insurance and Public Assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States,1890-1935.” American Historical Review 97 (Feb. 1992): 19–54 Google Scholar
Hornstein, Jeffrey M. “The Rise of the Realtor: Professionalism,Gender,and Middle Class Identity,1908-1950.” In Middling Sorts: Exploration in the History of the American Middle Class, ed. Bledstein, Burton and Johnston, Robert. New York, 2001, pp. 217-34.Google Scholar
Isenstadt, Sandy. “The Visual Commodification of Landscape in the Real Estate Appraisal Industry,1900-1992.” Business and Economic History 28 (Winter 1999): 61–70.Google Scholar
Kerber, Linda K. “The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment—An American Perspective.” American Quarterly 28 (Summer 1976): 187–205.Google Scholar
Kerber, Linda K.. “Separate Spheres,Female Worlds,Women’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History.” Journal ofAmerican History 75 (June 1988): 9–39.Google Scholar
Koven, Seth, and Michel, Sonya. “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany,Great Britain,and the United States,1880-1920.” American Historical Review 95 (Oct. 1990): 1076–1108.Google Scholar
Milkman, Ruth. “Gender,Consciousness,and Social Change: Rethinking Women’s World War II Experience.” Contemporary Sociology 16 (Jan. 1987): 21–25.Google Scholar
Walkowitz, Daniel. “The Making of a Feminine Professional Identity: Social Workers in the 1920s.” American Historical Review 95 (Oct. 1990): 1051-75.Google Scholar
Weiss, Marc A. “Real Estate History: An Overview and Research Agenda.” Business History Review 63 (Summer 1989): 241-82.Google Scholar
Bulletin of the Women’s Council of the National Association of Real Estate Google Scholar
Boards. 1943-45.Google Scholar
Fortune Magazine. 1935.Google Scholar
Lifetime Living. 1952.Google Scholar
National Real Estate Journal. 1921.Google Scholar
Woman Realtor. 1950.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930. Population, Vol. V: General Report on Occupations. Washington, D.C., 1933.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940. Populat Vol. III, Pt. 1. Washington, D.C., 1942.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Seventeenth Census of the United States: 1950. Population, United States Summary. Washington, D.C., 1952.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1995. Section 13: Labor Force, Employment, and Earnings. Washington, D.C., 1995.Google Scholar
Archives of the Women’s Council of Realtors, Chicago.Google Scholar
De laViña, Lynda Y. “An Assessment of World War Il’s Impact on Female Employment: A Study of the Decade 1940-1950.” Ph.D. diss., Rice Uni-versity, 1982.Google Scholar