Female disorders

Snopes has republished "Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employes", a piece that was originally published in the July 1943 edition of Mass Transportation magazine.

There are some interesting and mostly innocuous items on the list of guidelines, but then there are some freakishly sexist and scary things too, like the following:

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination -- one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit but also reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job. Transit companies that follow this practice report a surprising number of women turned down for nervous disorders.

Hysteria, perhaps? o_o

(Interesting how they used to spell "employee" as "employe", isn't it? I wonder if it was pronounced differently as well?)