Feminine equality during WWII
One of my favorite things about going to chapel is seeing this massive flood of people all headed through the double doors of the church.
I'm exhausted but good. In my Recent American History class, we were going over women's roles before, during, and after WWII. The roaring 20s saw women being a bit more promiscuous and "out there," and then during the war, the feminine view of ladies staying at home, raising the kids, cleaning the house, went to hell in a hand bag. Women were tough, as seen in this picture: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/at0071.2s.jpg
Norman Rockwell did this rendention, called Rosie the Riveter. She has huge masculine arms, she rests her feet upon Mein Kampf, and she has her own version of awards and medals strung across her chest as she takes her lunch break. Many women worked in factories, being welders, hard manual laborers, assembling machines, and other tough jobs. Women were taught how to make dinner in 10 minutes or less, they were told to put their kids in day care and then go to work in the factories.
After the war, magazines told women how to take hours to make the perfect meal, how to raise their children, and expounded upon the emotional abuse and disengagement children would suffer if they did not have their mothers to raise them. Women were fired from their jobs, told to go home and start cooking and cleaning, and that it was wrong of them to even think of holding a paying job now that the real men were back from the war. Suddenly, it was a huge jump back to the Victorian era, where women were trophies put on the mantel, to be seen but not heard.
We watched a documentary of WWII women workers who were suddenly out of jobs. Many of their husbands were dead, and since they were women, they were not allowed to work where they were skilled at. They were lucky to find jobs scrubbing dishes, toilets, or luckier if they could be a nanny to someone else's children. Secretarial positions were available, but no longer were the higher paying jobs given to women. It was really tough on them, to suddenly be repressed and told to pipe down because the man was the man of her and her children and home, and she was to be absolutely nothing but a supporting fifth wheel to him. Freedom, and then repression again. And it all happened so quickly.
posted by Qwerty @ 11:57 AM
7 Comments:
I'm trying to see if my stuff works :O)
Hey gang. I need to figure out how to make a link in a post be underlined so all you have to do is click on it, instead of having to copy and paste it.
Also, how do many of you manage to actually re-name the link, so instead of the whole "http://yaddayaddayadda.com" stuff, you can just write, "Look HERE" and its a link you click on? I'm trying to figure this all out. Suggestions is good. Muchos Gracias.
Your stuff works! At the Chicago Museum of History and Industry they have in the giftshop hotpads with that picture of Rosie the Riviter on them. Hotpads! My loudmouth chauvinist brother said, "Thats right! You can do it, you can lift that apple cobbler." The cashier was not amused, and she told about people being offended about those hotpads. It's sad that so much inequality has happened, and still happening in many places. Have a great day, and good luck in those classes.
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Do you want to do this in a post, or a comment? For a post, it's quite easy, you just use "compose mode" and there is a button to insert a link. For writing a comment, you will want to type this: <a href="http://www.link.com">Name of the Link</a> A simple bit of HTML, a very good thing for a blogger to know.
Very interesting - it seems like with WWII deaths, women would still be a critical part of the labor force, but I guess a lot of the jobs were wartime only...
Hmmm, women get the bad end of things all too often in history...
Oh and for the hyperlinks, in the text editing window for your new posts, there is a button with a globe and chain link (to the right of the text color button) that makes creating links really easy.
I should delve into some HTML myself - thanks for the mini-lesson, excalibur!
Excalibur, your brother's comment cracked me up! A little screech escaped my throat, and I tried to remain calm. My brother would have said the SAME thing! Is Charles gone, or is he still in Russialand?
Brandon: 70,000 men were being released from enlistment per month when the war ended, and they all came back, flooding the job markets, looking for jobs. Our boys didn't die like fleas like the European men did--more than half of the Frenchmen died, leaving mainly old males behind to procreate and re-populate. So women were the first to be laid off. I can semi-understand... I mean, if that many men were flooding back into the states, and all the jobs were suddenly taken, then the shock of peacetime would be too great without something to occupy their time with, and work is many times the best therapy to depression. The government and business owners HAD to do their best to give them jobs, give them a fresh start at life. Its complicated--I'm not fully condemning them for firing the women, because I understand why they had to do it. But neither am I happy with it. Its just one of those things I guess.
However, in our day and age, something like that should never happen--women should not be belittled or treated less, because our society has changed enough where women are, at least on the logical level, seen to be equal to men when it comes to many pursuits.
And what about the whole, "men's bodies are made stronger than women's?" HA HA HA. Not all. I took a guy down who was a little older than me and had stronger muscles than me, but i was quicker and smarter when it came to wrestling. Of course on the majority whole, guys are stronger and more capable of stuff like that, but not always!!!! :O).
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