Every time somebody says that women "had to stay at home all the time" or "were not allowed to work back in the day" I laugh my head off. My maternal great-grandmother (born in 1912) went to work as a maid for a wealthy family when she was 12, and stayed in that position until she was 24 or 25; after that she opened a drugstore. My paternal great-grandmother was a farmhand. Both of my grandmothers worked outside the house. Women worked as nurses, bakers, maids, cooks, farmers, schoolteachers, seamstresses, factory workers. They worked in mines, factories, farms and hospitals. The only women who "never worked in the past" were the very wealthy ones.