1. Here Come the Girls
Aired: 6/24/2014
In the mid-19th century, shops up and down the country were owned and staffed by men, and the idea of shopping as a pleasurable experience was still a world away. As jobs opened in factories, shops lost their ready supply of young male apprentices. Groups promoted women's employment, shrugging off the notion that shop work was somehow 'unladylike'.
By the turn of the century, nearly a quarter of a million women were employed in shop work. They had forged new kinds of work for women and even helped transform the experience of shopping itself. The shopgirl was here to stay.