[...] What most women needed, they argued, was not a blanket guarantee of political and legal equality with men but the economic security provided by protective legislation.

Both sides enlisted support from male allies. The Woman’s Party made common cause with business interests who benefited from unregulated access to women’s cheap labor, and the maternalists were backed by trade unionists who saw protective labor regulations as a way to keep women from competing for men’s jobs. As the labor movement gained influence in the 1930s, the maternalists’ power grew, and they succeeded in blocking the passage of the ERA indefinitely. When FDR was elected in 1933, many prominent maternalists were appointed to his administration, including his secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, which enabled them to play a decisive role in shaping the federal welfare state.

But while the maternalists’ protective legislation laid the groundwork for the New Deal’s federal labor regulations, the specifics were left to the men. Many of the benefits enshrined in the New Deal were tied to employment, but the drafters were careful to distinguish among different types of work, providing generous benefits to some workers and none to others. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which set the first federal minimum-wage and maximum-hours laws; the National Labor Relations Act, which guaranteed workers the right to bargain collectively; and Social Security’s old-age and unemployment insurance programs did not extend to many low-paid workers, including farm laborers, maids, housekeepers, laundresses, child-care workers, and companions to the elderly, thus excluding most women, as well as black men, from the economic security and political recognition these laws afforded to the white male industrial working class.