Intro:
The silent film era, a time during the Progressive Era that ran roughly between 1880 and the late-1920s, presented unique economic opportunities for women. Not only did women gain financial independence by working in the industry, they also were afforded special circumstances to exercise their entrepreneurial abilities. Women in the silent film industry began primarily as actresses, but soon found their way into all aspects of film production and distribution. Women were screenwriters, producers, directors, costume makers, set designers, makeup artists, and musicians. Soon, women became founders of their own film production companies. They contracted with theaters to distribute their films for public consumption. To say that the silent film industry significantly changed employment and economic opportunities for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, is an understatement. This study investigates the economic growth that occurred with people working in silent film.
Methodology and Sources:
To determine what kind of economic growth occurred with women in the silent film industry, this study looked at the following U.S. Census data sets: Statistics of Occupations from 1900; special reports of Women at Work from 1900; charts of Women in Gainful Occupations for 1910 and 1920; and Occupation Statistics for the years 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910. Additionally, peer review articles from two experts in the field of silent cinema were consulted. Since the silent film industry was new, census reports did not list the various employment positions that persons occupied. This study matched occupations that correlated with those found in the industry, instead. For example, costume makers could be listed as dressmakers and seamstresses in the census and those numbers were used as one data set to try and account for persons working in the industry. Photographer statistics were used, as sources indicate that technology used in the silent film industry was based on photography (Bakker, 6). The weakness of the study lies in the numbers used. Therefore, they do not necessarily represent actual occupation numbers for the industry; they merely suggest that some of the reported numbers worked in a particular job, likely in the silent film industry.
Comparison:
Figure one demonstrates the numbers of men and women working in occupations that were found in the silent film industry for the years 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910. Men dominated the occupations in 1880, but a significant growth of women in occupations found in the silent film industry can help explain how they came to dominate the industry in its early years and throughout its existence.
Figure 1. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Occupation Statistics: 1880-1910.
Figure 2 compares the number of women in specific occupations related to those found in the silent film sector for 1900. Again, dressmakers and seamstresses did not necessarily dominate the work that women did in the industry, it merely suggests that as a profession, women costume makers were most certainly some of the dressmakers and/or seamstresses accounted for in census numbers.
Figure 2. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Women at Work Report: 1900.
Figure 3 compares women’s employment in occupation sectors related to silent film industry positions for 1910 and 1920. The statistics indicate significant growth in jobs such as designer (set designer), author/writer (screenwriter), and photographer (filmmaker), as well as theater owner and theater usher. Women in these professions experienced a marked increase, and even though these numbers are reported for all industries, they represent growth in occupation sectors found in the silent film industry.
Figure 3. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Women in Gainful Occupations: 1910-1920.
Findings:
Economic growth in terms of women in occupations found in the silent film industry grew from 1880 to 1920. Men were found to outnumber women in jobs found in silent film, but only for one data set year of 1880. The rest of the years included in the study saw women not only come to dominate jobs that were found in the silent film industry, they also indicate that more women in those positions meant more films were being made, more money was being generated, and more economic growth could be found.
The limitations of the study reside in the inability to obtain specific numbers of women in particular occupations within the silent film industry by only looking at U.S. Census reports. This means that further inquiry and in-depth analysis is needed to make the study a more reliable report of economic growth for women in the silent film industry. Also, time constraints for this study were problematic in researching and locating sources that could shed light on statistics that are directly representative of economic factors in the silent film industry.
Growth of the silent film industry came about for a few reasons - mainly due to the change in how films were shown to the public.The industry went from Nickelodeons to “fixed cinemas with a few hundred seats [that] quickly spread all over the country,” (Bakker, 10). Also, growth of women employed within the industry came about, especially in the last decade of the era - roughly from 1920-1929. Women worked as “producers, writers, actresses, costume designers, and other film professionals,” which in turn “directly contributed to silent films and played significant roles in shaping the silent film culture.” (Peng, 21).
Bibliography
Bakker, Gerben. "The evolution of entertainment consumption and the emergence of cinema, 1890-1940." Economic History Working Papers 22316 (2007). London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History. https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/wpaper/22316.html.
Peng, Alicia. “Social Changes in America: The Silent Cinema Frontier and Women Pioneers.” Humanities 13, no. 3. (2023). DOI:10.3390/h13010003.
U.S. Census Bureau. “Occupation Statistics: 1880-1910.” https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1914/dec/vol-4-occupations.html.
U.S. Census Bureau. “Women at Work Report: 1900.” https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1907/dec/women-at-work.html.
U.S. Census Bureau. “Women in Gainful Employment: 1910-1920.” https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1929/dec/monograph-9.html.
