Role Of Women
In the year 1898, women represented eight percent of the Klondike, and in Dawson City, this increased to 12 percent. A large amount of the visitors came to the Klondike for similar social and economic reasons as male prospectors. The imbalance of gender in the Klondike encouraged business proposals to ship young, single women into the region to marry newly wealthy miners. Very few, if any, marriages occurred, but some single women appear to have travelled on their own in the hope of finding flourishing husbands. The females had to dress somewhat formal, wearing long skirts and corsets. A large portion of the women adapted this for the clothing conditions and were always dressed appropriately.Very little mothers brought their children with them to the Klondike, as the safety for their children was first priority, and the Klondike was not the safest place for young infants. Once in the Klondike, very few women actually worked as miners. The women soon had to take up stressful duties such as thawing ice and snow for water, breaking up frozen food, chopping wood and collecting wild foods. Women took jobs in the service industry, as a waitresses or seamstresses, or they did laundry and made money off of it. A few women worked in the packing trade, carrying goods on their backs, or became domestic servants. Wealthier women invested in the mines and other expensive businesses. Some women in Dawson CIty worked in the entertainment and sex industries. Also, many got highly paid by either acting and/ or courtesans of Dawson. Women worked long hours and had significant expenses. The entertainment industry merged into the sex industry, where women made a living as prostitutes. The sex industry in the Klondike was concentrated on Klondike City and in a backstreet area of Dawson. A hierarchy of sexual employment existed, with brothels and parlour houses at the top, small independent "cigar shops" in the middle, and, at the bottom, the prostitutes who worked out of small huts called "hutches". Life for these workers was a continual struggle and the suicide rate was high.