“Now That We Have Girls in the Office”

In August 1918, the Railway Age Gazette published an editorial entitled “Give A Man a Man's Work,” which called for women to replace men in railway offices. ¹ This marked a change in the industry's attitude toward women employees. Railroad companies came of age within the nineteenth century's increasingly segregated gender system and masculinity was deeply embedded in railroad work culture, ² but during World War I, the gendering of railway work, previously taken for granted, came under fire. The long held association of railway clerical work with men was questioned and threatened.