America: A Paradise for Women

Abstract

Compared to the amount of men who had emigrated to the United States by World War I, the wave of female emigrants from Slovenia was much weaker in numbers. Missionaries like Friderik Baraga, Franc Pire and Jakob Trobec often summoned members of sister orders from their homeland to assist them in running households and performing missionary work as teachers, organ players and choir singers. During the period of mass emigration, many wives packed their bags and went after their husbands who had decided to live permanently in the United States, while many young women emigrated in the hopes of finding a husband in the New World. The majority of these women found employment as maids and cooks. Amongst these, the girls from Domžale (in Carniola) and its surroundings were something special. As expert straw hat makers, many of them were soon employed in the hat factories in New York, Chicago and Cleveland. The American Slovene women were active in emigrants' associations, Church activities and from the turn of the century onwards, also in the political life of the country. Most importantly, these women could breathe more freely in America, as they were not hemmed in by the restrictions of the patriarchal way of life which still governed society in their European homeland.