Women’s Work in Louisville, Ky.

Over a decade ago I assisted at the research desk in the Archives & Special Collections (ASC) at the University of Louisville for a short time. I’m not an archivist, but I find the archival collections fascinating and I’d worked the ten years prior as the Social Sciences Reference Librarian. ASC was short on staff that year and I had just taken the position of Head of Web Services and wanted to keep some contact time interacting with the public, so I jumped at the opportunity to assist at the ASC Research Desk.

While working there, I got a lot more exposure to their collections – particularly the photographic collections. Being a woman, I started to notice a pattern in the photos related to Louisville: they were heavily-weighted towards men – well-off White men in particular. Talking with our archivists revealed some history about the collections. Most of our Louisville images came from the work of photographic studios in Louisville and the work of the studios during the early twentieth century was largely paid for by – you guessed it – White businessmen. So, it’s no big leap to understand why you see so many men in business suits and relatively fewer images of women, but that just made me more curious about what women were doing during these times and what life was like for them.

That started a ten-year journey into researching women’s roles in the workforce of Louisville, Kentucky. My research took me through dozens of collections in the UofL Archives and Special Collections, as well as collections at the Filson Historical Society, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, the Jefferson County Public School Archives, and the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives.

In doing this, I “met” some fascinating women – from a frontier businesswoman to a nun / nurse for Civil War soldiers. I felt that their stories needed to be shared more broadly to make people more aware of the contributions of women’s work to our community and to advertise these amazing historical resources to people who’ve never set foot in one of our archives.

So the Women’s Work of Louisville, Ky., project was born. It’s available to anyone with internet access at https://womenwork.library.louisville.edu/. The project includes sections on Eras, Women, and a Timeline. The Eras section features essays about women’s occupations from settlement through World War II, along with a bonus essay on Louisville women’s fight for suffrage. The Women section includes short biographies of women in a variety of careers, from steamboat captain to Lieutenant Governor. Whenever possible, I tried to include quotes from the women themselves talking about their work experiences. The Timeline section highlights important legislation and firsts for women in Louisville.

I hope you enjoy learning about these women as much as I did. And when you’re ready to learn more, come visit us in the archives!

https://womenwork.library.louisville.edu/