Rona Jaffe
Rona Jaffe was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1931. She was the daughter of Samuel Jaffe, a high school principal, and Diana Ginsberg Jaffe, the daughter of Moses Ginsberg, the construction magnate who built the Carlyle Hotel.
Rona was raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and was a lifelong New Yorker. She attended the Dalton School and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951 at the age of 19. In her early twenties she worked at Fawcett Publications, starting as a file clerk and working her way up to associate editor. At twenty-five she quit her job to focus on a novel she had started about women in the publishing industry.
In the fall of 1958, her first novel, The Best of Everything, was published by Simon & Schuster. The work, provocative and prescient, hit a nerve among readers, especially women, and became an overnight success and bestseller.
The following year, a film adaptation was released starring Joan Crawford, Hope Lange, Suzy Parker, and Diane Baker. Rona went on to write fifteen more novels during her career, including Class Reunion, Family Secrets, The Road Taken, and The Room-Mating Season. The Best of Everything was reprinted in 2005 and continues to be a cultural touchstone.
In 1995 she established The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards (1995-2020), a program to identify and support emerging women writers. The awards program acknowledged the difficulties some of the most talented among them had in finding time to write and gaining attention. After her death in 2005, the Foundation broadened its support for women writers by establishing fellowships at distinguished cultural and educational nonprofit institutions throughout the country.
Rona Jaffe’s beloved and groundbreaking work The Best of Everything was recently released as part of the prestigious Penguin Classics series in tandem with the novel’s 65th anniversary in March 2023.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Best of Everything (1958)
Away from Home (1960)
The Last of the Wizards (1961)
Mr. Right Is Dead, novella and five short stories (1965)
The Cherry in the Martini (1966)
The Fame Game (1969)
The Other Woman (1972)
Family Secrets (1974)
The Last Chance (1976)
Class Reunion (1979)
Mazes and Monsters (1981)
After the Reunion (1985)
An American Love Story (1990)
The Cousins (1995)
Five Women (1997)
The Road Taken (2000)
The Room-Mating Season (2003)
Women in the Workforce
The U.S. Department of Labor established the Women’s Bureau in 1920. The Women’s Bureau promoted the welfare of working women and created standards and policies to improve working conditions for women and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment. In 1920, women made up about 20% of the labor force.
A major factor that contributed to the growth of the U.S. labor force in the second half of the twentieth century was the remarkable increase in the labor force participation rate of women. During this time, the U.S. economy experienced economic growth that increased the demand for labor. Baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) began entering the labor force in large numbers.
From the 1930s to 1950s, more married women entered the workforce. In 1890, only 8% of employed women were married. In 1930, 26% of employed women were married, and by 1950, 47% of employed women were married.
In the 1940s, women were employed in war industries for World War II in areas such as aircraft production, army supply depots, foundries and shipyards.
In the postwar era, around 35% of women participated in the workforce and were employed in both part-time and full-time work in industries including mathematics, science, legal and health services.
Share of labor force held by women continues to grow
As a result of the surge in the women’s labor force participation rate from the 1960s to 1990s and large numbers of women in the baby-boom generation entering the labor market, the share of women in the labor force progressively increased. In 1950, there were 18.4 million women in the labor force, which accounted for about one-third of the total labor force. In 2000, there were 66.3 million women in the labor force, who made up 46.5% of the total labor force. By 2015, the number of women in the labor force had increased to 73.5 million, comprising 46.8% of the overall labor force. According to projections, the number of women in the labor force will increase to 77.2 million in 2024 for a 47.2% share.
The gender gap has significantly narrowed in the past several decades. Men made up more than two-thirds of the labor force in 1950. By 2000, the gap between the share held by women and by men had narrowed to just 7.0 percentage points. By 2024, the gender gap is projected to be 5.6 percentage points.
TRAILBLAZERS
Marie Tharp -1957
Category: Science
Marie Tharp helped create the first map of the floor of the North Atlantic, published in 1957. Because she was a woman, Tharp was not allowed on research vessels, so she worked as a cartographer on land and helped outline the ocean floor by using data collected by her partner, Bruce Heezen.
AMERICAN POP CULTURE
MUSIC
The world audience for music in the 1950s was the largest in history and showed every sign of growing even larger. Musicians of reputation were in such demand that they could have been performing every day of the year. Traditional seasonal patterns had disappeared.
Classical music was still very popular. Blues, swing and jazz were easily accessible. Rock and Roll was in its infancy.
Popular Artists from the 1950s
The Andrews Sisters
Nat King Cole
Aretha Franklin
Tony Bennett
Elvis Presley
Chuck Berry
Buddy Holly
Sam Cooke
The Everly Brothers
In the 1950s, women preferred short-strapped handbags that stayed close to the body. The materials used for purses were much more varied than they are today. In the early 1950s, most purses were made from crocodile, alligator, turtle or snake skin.
Popular high fashion purse designers included Gucci, Chanel, Dior, Hermes, Wilardy and many others.
Some of the most popular toys from the 1950s included lithographed tin toy cars, die-cast cars, trucks and farm equipment.
For girls, plastic mannequin dolls for dressing finally got popular enough for a major toy manufacturer to start making them. This doll was called Barbie.
Other toys included rocking horses, wooden blocks, building toys like Tinkertoys, Erector sets and even battery operated cars that are as big as 2 feet long.
Most Popular toys from the 1950s
Play-Doh
Silly Putty
Magic 8-ball
Frisbee
Slinky
Hula Hoop
The automobile industry in the United States established an all-time production record. Total production in 1950 was 7,987,000 vehicles.
Prices on new cars climbed in 1952, but taxes rose even higher. By mid-year, it was estimated that of $2,000 paid for a new automobile, $650, or about a third, went into taxes.
Automatic transmissions, power brakes, power steering, power adjusted front seats, power windows and air conditioning increased in popularity. Over 80% automobile models had automatic transmissions by the end of the decade.
Production photography: Pin Lim