The occupational choices of those young women who did work were severely circumscribed. Most women lacked significant education--only 54 percent of girls aged 5 to 19 were enrolled in school in 1890. 4 And women with little education mostly toiled as piece workers in factories or as domestic workers, jobs that were dirty and often unsafe.
Educated women, like those who attended Brown’s Women’s College, were scarce. Fewer than 2 percent of all 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in an institution of higher education, and just one-third of those were women. 5 Such women did not have to perform manual labor, but their choices were likewise constrained.