Women went back to working at home and jobs were taken over by men again. They say that World War One did very little to change the position of women in Britain. The truth is that World War One did change the lives of women but the extent was limited and their role in society was never the same as it had been before 1914. It is important to remember that if it wasn’t for their protest and demonstration before, women’s rights wouldn’t have been on the agenda of the government and change would have taken much longer. With so many young men enlisted in the army, the role women played was crucial, not only to the war
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.
The Nazi’s were fixed on the idea that a woman’s role was at home, being a mother and a wife. They wanted women to have plenty of children so the birth rates would go up and Germany could form a large army and become a more powerful nation. Working class women were removed from factories and encouraged to stay at home, and middle class women were removed from their professions. They were urged to wear traditional clothing, and behave in a much less liberal way than was allowed during Weimar times. 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.
World War 1 played a significant part in developing women's political rights in both positive and negative ways. World War one may have foiled the drive by women to gain political rights just as much or even more so then it helped. Pre war women did have working opportunities though very little compared to men, as they were seen as weaker and that their place was in the "home". Their employment was limited to the domestic service (cleaning or working as a servant) and secretarial work and not manual labor in factories or working class women often worked in the textiles industry. Women were lower paid and were restricted to do less skilled work, as they were considered incompetent.
Almost all jobs men did before they left to fight in the war were now a women’s job. All these jobs were a drastic change from their usual routine of cooking, cleaning and being “baby makers”, though women still got paid less than half of what men were getting paid doing these jobs. Women all across Canada started to realize that there might be something more for them in their future. Since women were doing so much for the war effort, they wanted a share in making decisions about their country. This is when women first began to work for political equality with men.
Using my own research i will discover whether the World War One had a positive effect on the role of women. After the immediate rise in female unemployment at the beginning of the war due to the ‘middle-classes wish to economise’ (first world war, accessed 07/01/09), the only option to replace the volunteers gone to front was to employ women in the jobs they had left behind. This was supported by all the major feminist groups, who suddenly ‘became avid patriots and organisers of the women in support of the war effort’ (war and gender, accessed 22/01/09). Overall women’s employment increased from ‘three million in 1914 to five million in 1918’ (Murphy, p373, 2000). For many of the women the war was ‘a genuinely liberating experience’ (first world war, accessed 07/01/09), and made the women feel useful as citizens.
There was a massive disruption of the industries in which women were mostly employed, such as dress-making and textiles. This, in the end, was actually a benefit. As war work became available, such as munitions factories, many of those women could now work in a higher paid job as well as do their part in the war effort. Women in the domestic services even left their jobs in order to work for higher paid jobs2. The first world war gave women more opportunity in the workplace as more occupations were open to them and the war also
Finally the men didn’t think much of women for doing things that they could. Most men married women for their inheritance, childbirth, appearance, housekeeping and were expected to be married by their families. I think the suffragists campaigns were important but not as important as what happened during WW1. Source one shows Joyce’s opinion so it’s not a solid fact so it might not be reliable as she could be bias to the suffragists. But I believe that the suffragists did help women win the vote by showing they can do it in a calm and peaceful way.
Before the 20th century, the role of a woman was only to stay home and cook, clean, and take care of the kids. A woman going out a having a career of her own was never even a thought. Women were not allowed to do labor intensive work as they were considered physically weaker than a man. Because of this, men took all the opportunities they wanted to become successful whereas women’s opportunities were limited in the household as that was the only place they could ever be. Now, in the 20th century, women have a multitude of opportunities when compared to women back then.
Women in the work place began with World War I, around 1914. As thousands of men are serving for their country in a war, there was a shortage of men able to work at the factories and jobs that they had left behind. With this shortage, women’s roles begin to shift as they are filling in the gaps to help survive and provide for their families as the “main bread winners” are away on duty. These women began by being hired and producing mass amounts of war materials outside their homes and in factories. Change for these women showed them a new world of decent wages and rewarding satisfaction of providing for themselves.