Introduction

State's Mates Yearbook Cover, ca. 1959-1960

In the years after World War II, male students were flooding college campuses across the nation because of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, widely known as the GI Bill, which provided veterans with college education.  Since the students were too busy with their academic studies, many of them were unable to provide a stable income for their families because of little time to hold jobs. Therefore, many wives found employment to supplement income while their husbands were enrolled in school. Already in charge of raising children and creating a comfortable home, students’ wives were also part of the labor force. This exhibit explores the various roles that many of the members of the State’s Mates took on and how the organization offered support and solidarity for it’s members while their husbands were students. Although popular history would define State’s Mates as contradictory to the label of a “housewife” in the mid-twentieth century, the members of State’s Mates were in line with the labor trends of the era: most women were not simply housewives, but also a major contributor to the American labor force. If anything, their involvement with the State’s Mates organization was what set them apart from other female workers. 

Since the 1970s, women’s history has become an essential field for the discipline. Having roots in the women’s rights movement, women’s history has interrogated questions linked to aspects of struggle for gender justice within the social movement: its roots, impact, and limitations. Therefore, innumerable accounts of women’s lives and gender politics have composed the popular field. However, historically speaking, students’ wives have not been a topic of investigation. Though female students, housewives, and women workers have been historically interrogated, wives of male students in the twentieth century do not fall into any of the categories. Judging by the resources available, there is a gap in scholarship about students' wives on college campuses in the mid-twentieth century. However, it is unlikely that the State's Mates are an isolated group belonging only to the history of North Carolina State University. Since these women were a product of the time in which they lived, it is worth researching if an organization like State's Mates were widespread across college campuses. 

Visit other Exhibits in the Good Wife Diploma.