ABSTRACT
In the post-World War I period, Atlanta’s economy and its workforce reflected a decidedly white-collar hue. From 1910 to 1940, the manufacturing workforce remained stable, while financial, commercial, and clerical employment grew. White-collar work opportunities greatly expanded in the city largely because of an underemployed pool of potential women workers. Women’s office workforce participation rose aided by technological innovations and the retooling of labor force management. Businessmen established, through national associations and personnel policy, standards for managing the office workforce. Many office standardization techniques, characterized by task division, departmentalization, and a subsequent lack of promotional opportunities, rapidly followed the Civil War. Scientific management techniques, widely interpreted and broadly applied, significantly affected the work environment of Atlanta female office workers. Atlanta offices did not rigorously apply scientific management, but the techniques they applied affected low-level workers, many of them women.
