In 1940, there were more than 2 million of America's white collar girls at work. She was typically under 30, Anglo-Saxon, living far away from her family in unfamiliar urban environment, and probably sent money home. She was increasingly likely to buy rather than make her own clothing, and participated as a consumer in a new sense of female independence.
Unlike her African-American counterparts, who worked mainly in domestic service and agriculture, she found new opportunity through the tremendous rise in clerical positions. For, you see, the invention and proliferation of the typewriter freed male clerks for managerial roles and white women filled the gap as secretaries, typists, and stenographers-- jobs that came to be (and are often still) considered "women's jobs."
