United States Women's Bureau

The United States Women's Bureau (WB) is an agency of the United States government within the United States Department of Labor. The Women's Bureau works to create parity for women in the labor force by conducting research and policy analysis, to inform and promote policy change, and to increase public awareness and education. The Director is appointed by the President. Prior to the Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011, the position required confirmation by advice and consent of the Senate. Since its founding in 1920, the Director of the Women's Bureau has always been a woman. She is supported by a staff in the national office as well as ten regional offices. Establishment The Women's Bureau evolved out of the Woman in Industry Service, which was established on July 1, 1918, as a war-time service to employ women. It was headed by social activist Mary van Kleeck, who was the head of the Department of Industrial Studies at the Russell Sage Foundation. In 1917, amidst World War I, van Kleeck undertook an investigation of the possibility of employment of women in Army warehouses at the behest of the War Industries Board. She recommended the creation of a Women's Bureau in the War Department, and as a result President Wilson appointed van Kleeck to lead a new Women in Industry Service group, a sub-agency of the Department of Labor. Van Kleeck wrote that the great numbers of women brought into the workforce by the war represented a "new freedom" for women: "freedom to serve their country through their industry not as women but as workers judged by the same standards and rewarded by the same recompense as men".