How Women Shaped the New Deal

FDR often gets the credit, but women made the “3 Rs” work

Frances Perkins (left), President Roosevelt and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt leaving for Warm Springs, GA, 1935. Harris & Ewing Photograph Collection, Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the New Deal, launched in 1933. The New Deal was a sweeping set of programs, projects, reforms and regulations spearheaded by American president Franklin D. Roosevelt, affectionately known as “FDR.”

The New Deal was designed to address the “3 Rs”: Relief for the poor and unemployed, Recovery of the economy from the scourge of the Great Depression, and Reform of the country’s financial system to ensure a depression would not happen again.

While FDR often receives the lion’s share of credit for the New Deal, it was several influential, hard-working women who really turned the “3Rs” into reality.

Frances Perkins: New Deal Architect

Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, on cover of TIME magazine, 1933. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Appointed by FDR as Secretary of Labor and the first woman to serve in the Presidential Cabinet, Frances Perkins is widely regarded as “The Woman Behind the New Deal.” (That is also the title of a 2009 biography of Perkins by Kirsten Downey.)