Podcast Summary:
New Books Network – Ruby Oram, Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870-1930 (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Aired: December 27, 2025
Host: Ali Morris
Guest: Dr. Ruby Oram, Assistant Professor of Practice, Texas State University
Overview of the Episode
In this wide-ranging episode, Ali Morris interviews Dr. Ruby Oram about her new book, Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870-1930, published by the University of Chicago Press. The conversation explores the intersections of gender, child labor, and educational reform during the Progressive Era, focusing particularly on the ways urban schooling was shaped by anxieties about girlhood and labor, and how these reforms both empowered and constrained working-class and immigrant girls. Dr. Oram draws on extensive archival research, revealing stories of resistance and negotiation among girls, the role of women reformers, and the ongoing legacy of these Progressive Era debates in current education policy.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Dr. Oram’s Background and Approach
[02:30-06:35]
- Dr. Oram’s entrance into history was through public history and historical preservation, particularly in Chicago's urban landscape.
- Noted the underrepresentation of sites associated with women or marginalized people on the National Register of Historic Places:
"As of 2020, there were about 100,000 buildings on the National Register, and only 8% represented histories of women or communities of color." (Dr. Ruby Oram, 04:11)
- Her work documenting the Lucy Flower Technical School for Girls in Chicago inspired the research that evolved into her book.
2. From Dissertation to Book: Centering Child Labor and Gender
[06:35-09:44]
- The original dissertation focused on the Lucy Flower Technical School; the book broadens out to problematize child labor as a gendered issue in mass education.
- Shifted from just gendered education reform to examining how anxieties over girlhood labor influenced compulsory education:
"My research argues that ... we're not gendering that child labor problem....It was about girlhood labor and these really specific anxieties about what would happen if girls entered the workforce..." (Dr. Oram, 08:21)
3. Helen Cusack’s Exposé and The Turn Toward School Reform
[09:44-14:41]
- The book opens with reporter Helen Cusack’s 1888 undercover series, “City Slave Girls,” which spotlighted working girls in Chicago’s garment factories.
- Cusack called for school reform instead of factory inspections, reflecting how reformers saw education as central to resolving the “girl labor” problem:
"She's not talking about child labor, she's talking about girl labor. She's talking about the, quote, city slave girls..." (Dr. Oram, 12:19)
- Reformers of the period held to new ideologies of childhood and adolescence as protected stages, using schools as tools for both social protection and social control.
4. Complicating the Legacy of Women Reformers
[14:41-18:25]
- The key actors were mostly white, Protestant, elite “club women” who often furthered their positions by defining and policing working-class and Black girls’ labor.
- On the pitfalls of equating women’s advancement with feminism:
"Just because one woman succeeds or is in a leadership position does not mean that women are succeeding. ... a movement by women is not necessarily a movement for women." (Dr. Oram, 16:16)
- Even progressive era women’s groups demanded “separate but equal” provisions—equality through expanding home economics for girls, not identical opportunities.
5. How Girls Resisted Domestic Training & Reform
[18:42-23:23]
- Girls exercised agency, subverting or resisting reformers’ intentions both in carceral (reform) schools and urban public schools.
- Examples include riots, refusal to do domestic tasks, and deliberate choosing of courses geared toward white-collar work rather than domestic service:
"By 1913, only 2% of high school girls are taking household arts. ... One in three female students are taking classes not designed for them at all.... They want to work in offices." (Dr. Oram, 21:17)
6. Race, Class, and Categorizations of Girlhood
[23:23-27:10]
- Categories like "dependent" (white, American-born, “worthy” poor) and "delinquent" (Black, immigrant, or “sexually deviant”) structured which girls were deemed deserving of benevolent or punitive interventions.
- These distinctions shaped not just juvenile justice but the broader public school system and child labor laws.
7. Archival Sources and Centering Girls’ Voices
[27:10-29:56]
- Dr. Oram cross-referenced reformers’ papers, school board archives, and rare oral histories from former students to reconstruct girls’ perspectives:
"I was lucky to find an incredible oral history collection of girls who went to the Lucy Flower Technical School, reflecting on their time ... from the 1910s through the 1960s." (Dr. Oram, 28:36)
8. Schools as Sites of Social Control and Advancement
[29:56-33:47]
- The book rejects a binary view: Schools were simultaneously tools for social control and engines for advancement, often in unintended ways.
- Girls used schools to gain white-collar skills against reformers’ wishes:
"Girls used schools for social advancement by using the school system on their own accord, often in direct contradiction to social reformers..." (Dr. Oram, 31:08)
9. Bridging Subfields: Education, Carcerality, Gender, Urban History
[33:47-37:52]
- Dr. Oram positions education history as inseparable from women’s, gender, and carceral humanities, arguing that a focus on girls reveals previously invisible inequalities.
10. Is Chicago Unique? National Patterns of Gendered Education Reform
[37:52-42:32]
- While Chicago had singular features (e.g., early female superintendent), similar gendered reforms and schools appeared across all major industrial cities—ultimately culminating in federal policies (Smith-Hughes Act, 1917).
- Reformers used highly networked, national strategies:
"This is really a larger story about urban America that uses Chicago as a case study..." (Dr. Oram, 41:15)
11. Surprising Discoveries & Contradictions
[42:32-47:20]
- Reformers paradoxically viewed office work as more dangerous (morally) for girls than factory work, despite its better pay and conditions.
- Domestic training was required in school as “empowering,” yet outlawed when performed for one’s own family:
"Caring for children during the school day... that's educational. But if that girl leaves school ... that is child labor." (Dr. Oram, 46:16)
12. Parents’ Contradictory Roles and Intergenerational Tensions
[47:20-49:52]
- Parents sometimes clashed with daughters over the value of domestic courses; Black mothers might want domestic science for respectability, daughters viewed it as training for servitude.
13. Intended Audience & Lessons for Today
[49:52-53:03]
- Book is for scholars, students, and interested readers in women/gender history, education, youth, urban and policy studies.
- Main lesson: Be wary of expecting schools to solve entrenched social problems alone—it results in burdens unevenly placed on (mostly) girls/students.
14. Next Project
[53:19-54:53]
- New project addresses women’s temperance activism and their roles in police/prison reform, bridging prohibition, carceral state, and women’s political histories.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On reframing reformers’ legacy:
“Just because one woman succeeds or is in a leadership position does not mean that women are succeeding. ... a movement by women is not necessarily a movement for women.”
— Dr. Ruby Oram, [16:16] -
On girls’ resistance:
“…we have many oral history testaments of this where they're literally saying, ‘I hated cooking. I wanted to learn to type. I wanted an American education, and I wanted to be an American girl, which to them meant liberal arts education and white collar skills...’”
— Dr. Ruby Oram, [22:10] -
On contradictions in reformers’ thinking:
“So higher wages lead to sex work, but not making enough wages also leads to sex work. So all roads lead to sex work.”
— Dr. Ruby Oram, [44:49] -
On policy lessons:
“…the expectation that schools alone can reshape society was really misplaced, because they can't… It ultimately just placed burdens on students because suddenly girls are the ones that have to pick up the slack to uplift the tenements.”
— Dr. Ruby Oram, [51:38]
Timestamps for Key Segments
- [02:30] Dr. Oram’s public history roots and historiographical motivations
- [06:52] Evolution from dissertation to broader focus on gendered child labor
- [09:44] Helen Cusack story and introduction of “girl labor”
- [14:41] Nuances in the legacy of women reformers
- [18:42] Girls’ resistance to domestic/vocational education
- [23:48] The invention and impact of “dependent” and “delinquent” girl labels
- [27:23] On archival strategies and bringing out girls' voices
- [29:56] Social control vs. advancement: new perspectives
- [33:47] How the book bridges multiple academic subfields
- [38:15] How representative was Chicago? Nationwide patterns
- [42:48] Most surprising research findings and reformer contradictions
- [47:39] The complex role of parents in these dramas
- [49:52] Who the book is for and why it matters now
- [53:19] Dr. Oram’s next research project: temperance and policing
Final Takeaway
Dr. Oram’s Home Work provides a rich, intersectional lens on Progressive Era education, revealing how gendered anxieties and reformist ambitions shaped the lives and resistances of working-class and immigrant girls. The book challenges simplistic narratives of feminist progress, complicates our understanding of policy, and raises crucial questions for those who look to schools as engines of social change.