American Women Leaving the Home and Going to Work

The 1940’s were a turning point for women in the workforce. Women were perceived to be the weaker sex by society and faced social prejudices in efforts to become part of the workforce. The common belief was that women were intellectually inferior to men, incapable of making decisions regarding their household, and should not work outside of the home. Their job was to maintain the home, raise the children, and be supportive wives of the working husband.

Women’s role in society changed quite a bit during WWI and throughout the 1920s. During the 1910s women were very short or liberty and equality, life was like an endless rulebook. Women were expected to behave modestly and wear long dresses. Long hair was obligatory, however it always had to be up. It was unacceptable for them to smoke and they were expected to always be accompanied by an older woman or a married woman when outing. Women were usually employed with jobs that were usually associated with their genders, such as servants, seamstresses, secretaries and nursing. However during the war, women started becoming employed in different types of jobs such as factory work, replacing the men who had gone to fight in the war in Europe. In the late 1910s The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) had been fighting for decades to get the vote for women. As women had contributed so much to the war effort, it was difficult to refuse their demands for political equality. As a result, the Nineteenth Amendment to the constitution became law in 19...

Schnell, J. Christopher. "Paul, Alice (1885-1977)." DISCovering U.S. History. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center - Junior. Gale. Poudre High School. 18 Feb. 2011 .

Throughout the years women’s lives have changed. Women in American society live’s have changed for the better in the past several years: there is more freedom for women to live their lives the way that they choose too, wives can help their spouses with income rather than depending on the husband to make money for their family, and women have more say in the government than they did in the early 1900s. Back then, none of the things seemed possible for women and young ladies.

For several decades, most American women occupied a supportive, home oriented role within society, outside of the workplace. However, as the mid-twentieth century approached a gender role paradigm occurred. The sequence of the departure of men for war, the need to fill employment for a growing economy, a handful of critical legal cases, the Black Civil Rights movement seen and heard around the nation, all greatly influenced and demanded social change for human and women’s rights. This momentous period began a social movement known as feminism and introduced a coin phrase known in and outside of the workplace as the “wage-gap.”

Between the years of 1776 and 1876, a key change came about in America over the women. Before these dates, women were not considered to be very important to the community. The only major role they played was raising children and bringing food to the table. Since the years of the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, however, the nation nearly doubled its geographic boundaries and its population. When the Market Revolution hit America, many people felt isolated and cut off from traditional sources of comfort and community.

Women began to speak out against the laws that were deliberately set against them. Throughout this time period, women were denied the right to vote in all federal and most state held elections. Women struggled to achieve equality; equality as citizens, equality in the work place, and equality at home. During this time, Americans worked to fight corruption in government, reduce the power of big business, and improve society as a whole.

She showcases a variety of different scenarios, standards, and occupations that women were subjected to at the time. This helps the readers to see the difficulties women of that time period had to overcome to secure what little rights they were able. The oppression of working class women did not just affect those said individuals, but in turn, males, children, and other upper class females. Stansell’s ability to look beyond the normal subject matter permits her to capture the inimitable atmosphere surrounding the struggle of an assorted group of women to find their footing within the society of a nation that was facing its own struggle of independent and prominence. Thus, giving City of Women a fascinating edge against other books of a similar

The Second Industrial Revolution had a major impact on women's lives. After being controlled fro so long women were experiencing what it was like to live an independent life. In the late nineteenth century women were participating in a variety of experiences, such as social disabilities confronted by all women, new employment patterns, and working class poverty and prostitution. These experiences will show how women were perceived in the Second Industrial Revolution.

Phillips, Charles. "December 29, 1890." American History 40.5 (2005): 16. MAS Ultra - School Edition. EBSCO. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.