Oberlin's Women: A Legacy of Leadership & Activism

Mildred Fairchild Woodbury

Mildred Fairchild Woodbury (1894-1975, OC 1916) was an educator and labor economist. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1916, Woodbury completed a Ph.D. degree from Bryn Mawr in 1929.  She dedicated her career to helping improve working conditions for women and children. Woodbury worked as the director of the graduate department of social economy at Bryn Mawr from 1934 to 1946. She then became the head of the Service for Women’s Work and the Protection of Youth for the International Labour Office. She held the position from 1947 to 1954. Woodbury served on the Committee on Cost of Living for Minimum Wage Board for the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry from 1935 to 1936. She also served from 1938 to 1939 on the State Advisory Council on Employment Service and Unemployment Compensation for the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. Woodbury was chairman of that council from 1940 to 1941. She was a member of Glove Industry Wages and Hours Division of the Industrial Committee for Minimum Wage from 1942 to 1943. From 1943 to 1944 she was the chairman of the Committee on Employment of Women for the Labor Management Committee of the War Manpower Commission in the Philadelphia area. Woodbury also wrote several publications including Factory, Family, and Woman in Soviet Russia, which she co-authored with Susan Myra Kingsbury after working as a research fellow at the American Russian Institute in the Soviet Union.

Sources:
“Mildred Woodbury, Teacher and Labor Economist, Dies.” The New York Times (New York City, NY), Feb. 12, 1975.

“Mildred Fairchild,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine, March 1946, RG. 0/28,
O.C.A.

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