5
and build a career upon it. For this, the author argues, “You and I must require for
ourselves the full money worth of our labor’s hire.”
10
A series also titled “Women in Business,” ran in LHJ early in 1929. Unlike
Fleischman’s, however, these unbylined articles were framed in the “Woman as
Exception” pattern, focusing on jobs unusual for women and the oddity of women having
them. One woman was deemed newsworthy because she sold gravel, while another was a
“lady inventor.” The tone and the focus on women as oddities is reminiscent of The
American Magazine’s “Interesting People” articles of the same era—short profiles
focusing on ordinary Americans whose endeavors ranged from noteworthy to freakish.
11
Fleischman’s articles were different. Her goal seems to have been to reframe “woman
as exception” into “successful woman as norm.” She uses a number of rhetorical
strategies to accomplish this, including long lists of successful women, so that their sheer
numbers illustrate that they were not exceptions, and the refutation of traditional binaries
between “femininity” and success. For example, she writes that, “Women can succeed in
a vast number of occupations. There is practically no barrier either of law or
insurmountable sex discrimination.”
12
Moreover, she says:
Women are capable, strong, intelligent, and possess all the latent talents
that might bring them to the top levels in this age of industrial democracy, but
they have not learned to think of themselves as active forces. . . . Young girls
cling to the dilettante, girlish, frivolous tradition of past centuries, which implies
fatally that charm and capability are incompatible. Women may be lovely and
10
Harriet Abbott. “Doctor? Lawyer? Merchant? Chief? Which Shall She Be? Woman’s New Leadership in
Business.” Ladies’ Home Journal. July 1920: 43 and 164.
11
See “Women in Business.” Ladies’ Home Journal. February 1929: 169. March 1929: 213. May 1929:
220-221.
12
Fleischman, January 1930, 62.
Convention