Without the changing role of women, things that we have in everyday life as American’s could possibly not exist. Women not only were more help to the family, but they were helping rebuild the nation. As a whole, women helped clean up the process of urbanization and immigration, helped literature grow, and helped change the ongoing problem of women’s suffrage. After the Civil War, many people from other countries started immigrating to America. As a result, urbanization quickly started going out of control due to lack of communication, too many people being forced into slums, and many other reasons.
1 Women’s lives after the two world wars changed, but there is some debate as to how much it changed. Their lives changed politically, with women gaining the vote, they changed in terms of employment, as they were now permitted to join certain professions and they also changed socially as a better way of living was set out for them. It is argued that women were given greater opportunities after the wars due to their exceptional participation on the home front. However, many historians believe that this change in women’s lives was simply due to the changing times and the progression in society. The historical debate surrounding this topic is wether women’s lives really did change greatly after the two world wars, or wether their lives simply went back to the way they were before the war started.
The 1940s and 50s were a time of great change. World War 2 was won and lost depending on what side you were on. Everyone’s lives were changed. After the end of World War 2, women were expected to return to their pre war roles of a house wife. The government saw women in the workforce as a temporary change.
They see the rise in the symmetrical family as a result of major social changes in the past century; changes in women position, including married women going out to work, geographical mobility, more couples living away from the communities in which they grew up. Additionally, Gershuny found that wives who worked full time did less domestic work and that the longer the wife had been in pain work, the more housework her husband was likely to do. However, the most important thing is that the roles of the husband and wife, although not identical, are more similar now then they
Another way the role of women changed during 1955 and 1975 was that they were becoming much more confident this is shown by Dominic Sandbrook: “the results was that the conventional, patronising view of women, which presented them as weak, unreliable and oversensitive, was no longer sustainable.” This shows that women (with some help from the new technology) were becoming stronger and more independent. Married women had more time to pursue their own interests, to go out and socialise, and to find some work. One other way in which the role of women changed during the years of 1955 and 1975 was that more girls and young women were able to get and go to further education (university). A girl in the 1970’s was far more likely to go to university than a girl in 1956 simply because women were seen as more independent. Dominic Sandbrook said: “She was more likely to pursue her own interests, to marry when and whom she wanted, to have children when and if she wanted and above all to decide whether she remained in the home or pursued her own career.” In conclusion,
Feminist movements have challenged the traditional stereotype of a woman’s role of being a stay at home mother and caring for her family. Women are less willing to listen and obey their patriarchal husbands, and in a majority of households; there are dual working families. Although radical feminists argue that we have still not achieved equality between men and women; there has been major improvements. The way in which feminists, as well as women in general look at younger girls has also changed. In previous years; advice given by older women to younger girls would be to make sure that they get married and they are not ‘left on the shelf’.
A rise in divorce rate may put some women off marriage as they see this will increase the likelihood of the marriage ending in divorce thus resulting in trends in getting married later in life. Q3. Suggest three reasons for the increase in the number of divorces? Three reasons for the increase in the number of divorces are changes in the position of women, secularisation and rising expectation of marriage. One reason for women’s increased willingness to seek divorce is that improvements in their economic position have made them less financially dependent on their husband and therefor freer to end an unsatisfactory marriage.
Many middle class women were unhappy about this, and after the freedoms and empowerment of women during Weimar they did not like the new constrictions – it seemed almost like a step back for them. However, financial incentives were given to women to stay home and have children, and awards were granted depending on how many children a woman had – the more children, the higher ranking the award. They were told that it was their responsibility to provide soldiers for the future. As a result of this, many more women became mothers than might have down normally. Married couples were encouraged to divorce if their partner was infertile and many women joined Nazi women’s organisations.
Feminists argue that the education system is just a primary preparation for leading into the future work force. They believe there are still gender differences in subject choice in schools. Colley (1998) reviewed this idea and found that despite all the social changes in recent decades, traditional definitions of masculinity and femininity were still widespread. However, Sharpe (1976, 1994) interviewed a sample of girls in the 1970’s and another sample in the 1990’s. She found that their priorities had changed from love and marriage in the 1970s to jobs, aspirations and careers in the 1990’s.
At some point, we as women are bound to hit a breaking point. An article by Columbia University describes what happens when women try to balance all of this at once. The article explains that Johnathan Platt, a Ph.D. student in Epidemiology at Columbia University, created a survey and found that when women make less than their male counterparts not only are they two and a half times more likely to experience depression but also as much as four times more likely to deal with anxiety (“Wage”). As if disturbing our mental health is not enough, I believe the gender wage gap also affects our self-confidence as women. For women, we do not need another excuse to feel that we are inadequate, especially because we are told daily; however, the gender wage gap does just that.