We Will Not Stay Silenced: How the Radium Girls Changed the Workforce

Women have historically been silenced in their efforts creating national change. A specific group of women fell victim to corporate greed and corruption and decided enough was enough. The, now dubbed Radium Girls, experienced horrors while working at the U.S. Radium Corporation factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut. Women were hired to paint the faces of watches to help soldiers in WWI. While these women were facing very serious health battles, the factory owners knowingly allowed the atrocities to continue because the dollar was louder than the pain of the women. These women were promised that the element, which had only been discovered by Marie Curie twenty years before, was safe. Advertisements also promised health benefits, but the women would soon see the painful side effects. Amelia “Mollie” Maggia was one of the first to show symptoms of radium poisoning. Maggia was the first to make the connections when other women began to show the same symptoms. For two years, the management team of the factories denied any correlation between the two, going as far as hiring “experts” to debunk any talk of a possible connection. The brave women would not take this denial at face value and began to spread the word about the mistreatment and illnesses, causing the sales of the watches to decline. Women began to file lawsuit after lawsuit not only to help with their now growing medical bills, but also to prove the danger of Radium and force factories to stop the use of Radium. The efforts of these women have been lost when retelling the history of the U.S. Their efforts have created health regulations for workplaces that protect employees today. Women’s achievements and protests are understated and give a lopsided view of history.