Virginia Penny

Virginia Penny (January 18, 1826 – April 4, 1913) was a social reformer and an economist, being the first to study women's labor markets both in the U.S. and in Europe. Her books were an important resource for the members of the newly formed American Social Science Association. She also served as an early leader of the American women's suffrage movement before coming more involved in labor union organization and running her own employment agency for women.

Early life and publishing career

The eldest daughter of Rachel Ruble and William Penny of Louisville, Kentucky, Virginia Penny was born on January 18, 1826, into a slaveowning family. Her father served as a city councilman and also co-founded the Louisville Savings Bank. At least three of her four brothers played a large role in her later life:

William - graduated from University of Louisville with a medical degree in 1872, died at home in Brooklyn, New York on January 21, 1914, at the age of 83

Alexander - also a doctor, lived on a farm near Louisville with his mother after his father's death, and died in December 1876

Icilius - worked as a farmhand in Alton, Illinois, where he was abused and starved when his sister found him there in the 1880s

After attending for two years, Penny graduated in 1845 from the Steubenville Female Seminary, run by the Presbyterians in Ohio. She taught there, in Illinois and Kentucky; and she served as the principal of the Female Department at Van Rensselaer Academy in Missouri. By the late 1850s, she had traveled to several big cities in the U.S. to study women's jobs and she used libraries to find information about European women. She lived in New York City from 1859 to 1861 to finalize her research and to publish what became the first publication of what jobs were open to women and what wages they might earn. Penny used a systemmatic research method to interview thousands of employers and workers. She used in-person interviews as well as mail-in survey questionnaires, ending up with 533 listings in the first version of her book: How women can make money married or single, in all branches of the arts and sciences, professions, trades, agricultural and mechanical pursuits (Philadelphia, 1862). Her unique book is the first of its kind to present not only the kinds of jobs in which women were employed then, but also those where, by reason of gender discrimination, they could have worked but were not employed in great numbers. Her thematic essays accompanying the lists of jobs included her analysis of the effects of the job on the health of its laborforce, the typical wages (and gender differentials), the length of the working day, as well as qualifications and length of training for a particular type of job. The book's intended audience, women seeking employment, was encouraged to explore ways by which to be job-ready and to not give up when first turned away because of gender discrimination.