This thesis is a quantitative analysis of women working for pay aged sixteen and older in five mid-size Texas cities from 1900 to 1940. It examines wage-earning women primarily in terms of race, age, marital status, and occupation at each census year and how those key factors changed over time. This study investigates what, if any, trends occurred in the types of occupations open to women and the roles of race, age, and marital status in women working for pay in the first forty years of the 20th century.