“A WOMAN CAN DO ANYTHING IF SHE PUTS HER MIND ON IT.”1 This conviction propelled the career choices of Helen Marie Bennett in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the vocational message she communicated. Bennett commenced her wide-ranging life's pursuits in western South Dakota, where she was raised, and brought them to culmination in Chicago, where she became a leader in the emerging field of vocational guidance. She firmly believed that all paths should be open to women and that women had a responsibility to find and follow their own vocation. Bennett's life experiences and interests sparked and shaped her career counseling work and led her to stage the Woman's World's Fair, held annually in Chicago from 1925 to 1928. The all-female enterprise stood as a visual portrayal of the achievements of women in an expanding range of occupations. “We are simply trying to show women what...
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Fall-Winter 2021
Research Article|
December 01 2021
Fitting Women to Their Work: The Vocational Vision of Helen M. Bennett
Lisa R. Lindell
Lisa R. Lindell
Lisa R. Lindell is a catalog librarian at Hilton M. Briggs Library, South Dakota State University in Brookings. Much of her research and writing focuses on the roles and work of women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) (2021) 114 (3-4): 55–84.
Citation
Lisa R. Lindell; Fitting Women to Their Work: The Vocational Vision of Helen M. Bennett. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 1 January 2021; 114 (3-4): 55–84. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/23283335.114.3.4.04
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