As we might say today, women’s ‘public image’ changed and improved,” says Constance Rover, a historian. Part of the reason why the war was key to women gaining the vote in 1918, was because of changing opinions towards women. “Surely a land fit for heroes to live in might include a place for a few heroines as well?” says Constance Rover. Women had proved themselves useful which was leading to greater equality with men. It would have been simply unreasonable to deny women the right to vote, especially now that women had more of a presence in society.
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.
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.
This showed that the Nazis viewed that the only job of the women was to produce as many children as possible in order to grow its empire. Next slide For example, this is a propaganda produced by Nazi party, promoting ‘Law for the Encouragement of Marriage’ which I’ve just talked about. The parents produced four children. The husband is holding the family together, and the mother is taking care of the baby. The husband and the boys have tough looks on their faces, representing that the males should be manly.
Due to the fact that women could control when they had children, they could now finish college and have more consistent jobs. Feminists fought to broaden the opportunities that the Pill helped make possible and in 1972 Title IX was enacted, “ending discrimination in education, throwing open the doors of colleges, law schools, and med schools to women” (Gibbs 8). The assumption that if women were to be accepted into these schools they would just get pregnant and drop out was no longer a valid reason to reject female applicants as it was once before. Subsequently, the Feminist Movement not only brought more rights and opportunities to women it also caused an uprising in sexual freedom of women and the US
This provides your essay with a clear, structured argument. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act gave women over 30 the vote, if they owned property or were married to a property owner. The major reason for women receiving the vote has been a fundamental source of debate amongst historians. Whilst traditional schools of thought argue that women’s work during WWI radically changed male ideas about their role in society with traditional historians such as Ray suggesting that giving women the vote in 1918 was almost a ‘thank you’ for their efforts, revisionist historians, however, find this analysis too simplistic. AJP Taylor, for example, argues that the war ‘smoothed the way for democracy’ and so there are other factors of significance, such as, suffrage campaign groups (WSPU & NUWSS) and growing equality with men.
O’Neil was hand-selected by a woman senator, because she was pretty and feminine and didn’t look like a stereotypical lesbian. O’Neil eagerly accepted the invitation, not because she wanted to be a “poster child” for women’s rights, but because she simply wanted to get training experience like the men where she worked so she could advance at her job. Men that she went to school with, were promoted ahead of her, strictly because they had training experience that she was forbid to participate in because she was told, “there are no female bathrooms on our ships.” To get her experience O’Neil had to make it through the grueling training called “hell week” where more than half of the candidates drop out because they don’t have the mental and physical strength. Throughout her training, O’Neil continuously demands that she be held to the same level of standards as the male trainees, but is constantly held to lower
Women achieved full equality regarding suffragein 1928. Representation of the People Act is amended and allows everyone over the age of 21 to vot. The liberation of women took other forms. They started to wear lighter clothing, shorter hair and skirts, began to smoke and drink openly, and to wear cosmetics. Married women wanted smaller families, and divorce become easier, rising from a yearly average of 800 in 1910 to 8000 in 1939.
Women were not eager to leave their children and their way of life to start working. However the demand for workers was so great that the government decided to launch a propaganda campaign that promoted a fictional character called Rosie the Riveter. Rosie was pretty, hardworking and most importantly patriotic. Rosie was supposed to motivate women, provoke a sense of self-worth and create the idea that they could be of service to their country just like men. In the end it worked, According to Aja Sorensen’s, Rosie the Riveter,” 12 million women (one quarter of the workforce) were already working and by the end of the war, the number was up to 18 million, which was one third of the workforce” (Sorensen).