From the beginning, wifehood and motherhood have been regarded as a women’s profession. They were not seen as breadwinners or professionals. As history has told us, women were considered the weaker sex, doing jobs such as laundry, milking cows, and taking care of children, leaving the “heavier” labor to the big strong men (wic.org). With technological advancement today, physiological test suggest women have a greater pain tolerance and statistics show that women live longer and are more resistant to many diseases. In the 20th century, women in most nations won the right to vote, this in return increased their educational and job opportunities.
Double burden was also common at the beginning of 1900’s as women worked to earn money but also had the responsibility for unpaid, domestic labor. In large urban cities, like Dublin, London or Paris, prostitution was the only way to survive for some lower class women. Among women, the unmarried individuals had more job opportunities than
They were part of the women life cycle, since many stated that they quit when they find a "beau" or get married. The dance hall culture changed by making "unescorted" women admission fees lower so to attract single women. In addition, the dance halls were a gathering of people looking for amusement and pleasure, so most "new" things in entertainment were tested there or developed there. On the contrary to many assumptions, the charity girls were not prostitutes since they didn't want money, but they wanted presents, attention, and other things that gave them pleasure. Some of them do it just for pleasure and others for financial support in the short term.
Believing sexism will go away without putting major changes in place, is not a reality. Sexism blatantly exists in the work place. Obvious (and most common) examples of this would be: women are often paid less than their male counterparts for the same position, men often receive rapid job promotions in comparison to women and women are usually the targets of gender based harassment. Women frequently struggle with the lack of pay they receive, in comparison to their male counterparts. A woman working in the same job as a man will usually earn less, despite the fact that she may have the same or better training, education, and skills required for the job ("Study Shows Female Managers in Britain Earn Less than Men, and Equality Could Be 57 Years Away."
The peaceful campaigning of the suffragists’ was a key factor in women receiving the vote. The suffragists’ started the whole route of women gaining the vote; they were the ever moving force behind the movement. However historian Martin Pugh suggests that “Suffragists would probably have done better to have made common cause with all unenfranchised men and women from the start and thereby they might have extended their appeal” because all men had not yet received the vote it was argued that women should not receive the franchise when it was not fully given to all men. However there were other contributing factors leading up to 1918 and women gaining the vote. They include the work of the suffragettes’ who caused chaos and grabbed the spotlight away from the suffragists’ after a group of women decided it was time to make a militant stand.
Throughout this essay, there will be key opportunities and hardships as to what many groups of Americans had to experience during World War II. Women had very opportune advantages during World War II. Some of these opportunities included working in forces for the first time, working in defense plants, and filling in for men and their professions while they prepared for war. Working in defense plants offered woman more challenging work and better pay than jobs associated with women before the war, including waitressing, clerking, and domestic services. While the men were away at war, women took advantage of rare occasions (open jobs men were associated to) by taking jobs as journalists the way men previously were and etc.
Then came into being the famous movement called The Suffrage Movement during which the women fought for their equal voting rights which all men were enjoying at that time because they were of the view that they were a part of the society too and they deserve all the rights to elect their representatives. This movement was started in 1848 and it ended in 1920. It continued for quite a long time and women had to face many hardships to fight for their own rights. But the period still could not end up in signing of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. During the whole period of 1920, women had put their emphasis on promoting the status of
“Working-class women, as much as their more wealthy counterparts, wound these commodities into their own culture based in display, self-statement, and glamour.” (Enstad, 18) Working women purchased cheap fiction known as dime novels. Women would often save up for weeks just to be able to purchase one book. Another common purchase of the working class woman was clothing. Similar to the novels, women would save up by skimping on their lunches to buy a dress from what the middle class called “slop” dress makers. These dresses were cheaper imitations of middle class fashion and would often fall apart, but the women bought them regardless.
1912 was a time where young people were expected to respect and be polite to their elders. It was also a time in which women were subservient to men and were expected to do as they say; all a well off women could do was get married; a poor woman was seen as cheap labour. In this year, women of the suffragette movement began to campaign to have the right to vote. Yet by 1945, most of those class and gender divisions had been breached. Priestley wanted to make the most of these changes.
This was actually a very important step towards women’s enfranchisement because during the war, women served the nation; doing factory work and men’s work in general. The fact that they were doing something useful to society served as proof that, contrary to the belief that women were “silly” and could not think for themselves, they could be a beneficial force in society. “The war emphasised the participation of women in the everyday life of the nation. It was obvious to all that women were driving vehicles, acting as bus conductors and filling many posts customarily held by men. As we might say today, women’s ‘public image’ changed and improved,” says Constance Rover, a historian.