During the time period in which the Weimar Republic controlled Germany from 1919 to 1933 there is a fundamental change in how women participated in their community in both political and in private matters. This fundamental shift in the behavior of women garnered individuals who lived during this era the title of the “New Woman” of the Weimar Republic. In order for women to earn a title like this that defined a specific generation would imply that there was an emphasis on women who implemented drastic changes in the values, appearance, privileges, and actions they partook in while living during this time period. These changes would go on to inspire other women causing a cycle that would leave the current generation in a vastly different place
American women in World War II brought significant changes which although people expectation that life would go back to normal they modify their lifestyle making women free of society pressure and norms, because the war changed the traditional way to see a woman and their roles leading to a new society where women were allowed to study and work in the same way than men. Creating a legacy with the principles of today’s society.
The period after World War One was very politically unstable. Many different kinds of governments, such as fascism and communism, were coming up all over Europe. One country that especially faced this political fluctuation was Germany. After the war, Germany was forced into a democracy known as the Weimar Republic, but this government soon collapsed and Hitler’s fascism took over. There were various factors that contributed to the fall of the Weimar Republic, but three major ones were the lack of popular support for the government, the lack of efficiency and internal organization, and the competition of other, more conservative parties such as the Nazis.
World War Two was the period where women came out of their shells and was finally recognized of what they’re capable of doing. Unlike World War One, men weren’t the only ones who were shined upon. Women played many significant roles in the war which contributed to the allied victory in World War Two. They contributed to the war in many different ways; some found themselves in the heat of the battle, and or at the home front either in the industries or at homes to help with the war effort as a woman.
The events of World War II have established a new public perspective on women. Through women’s accomplishments, they justified females were capable of achieving high standards that existed once as only attainable by men. Once vulnerable to prejudices, they’ve given an opportunity for all to comprehend there can be a life when the populaces aren’t segregated by race or gender. Women have rehabilitated the faded thought of their rights and responsibilities, bringing history closer to a more righteous and responsible dawn.
With the spread of the Nazi’s “national community” or Volksgemeinschaft ideology in the 1930s, came strict definitions from the Nazi party of what it meant to be German. Opposing the independent “new women” promoted in the 1920s by the Weimar Republic, the Nazi’s idea of womanhood was centered around creating a strong nation by pushing women to be mothers and maintain the household. In this way, those mothers could raise strong soldiers that could serve and protect Nazi Germany. While in contrast, Elsa Herrmann description of a “new woman” in a 1929 book, describes a woman focused on the present and actions such as entering the workforce. Most importantly, and the main reason the Nazis rejected the image of the “new woman,” is that the “new
After the success of antislavery movement in the early nineteenth century, activist women in the United States took another step toward claiming themselves a voice in politics. They were known as the suffragists. It took those women a lot of efforts and some decades to seek for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In her essay “The Next Generation of Suffragists: Harriot Stanton Blatch and Grassroots Politics,” Ellen Carol Dubois notes some hardships American suffragists faced in order to achieve the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Along with that essay, the film Iron-Jawed Angels somehow helps to paint a vivid image of the obstacles in the fight for women’s suffrage. In the essay “Gender at Work: The Sexual Division of Labor during World War II,” Ruth Milkman highlights the segregation between men and women at works during wartime some decades after the success of women suffrage movement. Similarly, women in the Glamour Girls of 1943 were segregated by men that they could only do the jobs temporarily and would not able to go back to work once the war over. In other words, many American women did help to claim themselves a voice by voting and giving hands in World War II but they were not fully great enough to change the public eyes about women.
Knowing this you would think women would portray themselves more seriously, but the exact opposite is happening. These continuous loops of failure have severely weakened women’s physical presence, and because of this, are continuously singled out in world discussions on topics such as war or threats to national security, and are constantly burdened with tasks regarding health and family life. In my research I read many books from the nineteenth-century onwards, such as, Stuart Mill’s book ‘The Subjection of Women’ (1869) to Butler’s ‘Gender Troubles’ (1990), both of these and many more books has helped in my quest to conjure up a personal concept of women, but out of all of them I found Berger’s ‘Ways of seeing’ the most fruitful in terms of a literal explanation of women.
The New Morality in the 1920’s was represented by a shift in cultural values. On one hand the minorities and social vulnerable groups gained more equality and social recognition, and on the other hand people holding the traditional values fearing of this sudden change formed their own groups to resist it, among which the most notable one was the Ku Klux Klan. When the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, American women finally gained their suffrages, the legal rights to vote. With this achievement accomplished, in the following decade, American women moved forward and gained even greater roles in society. The feminist ideal known as the New Woman was popular in the 1920’s. Symbolized by an image of women dressed practically, living independently and freely, it manifested sexual liberation and the coeducational system. Flappers, young women with free thinking, casual manners, new fashions a...
Throughout the classical and postclassical eras, it is evident that women have always held a certain label whether it be positive or negative. This was evident throughout various regions such as the Middle East, Africa, Americas, and Europe. The time period from 1750-1914 was also an era of industrialization, in places especially like Europe. New machinery and a grand-scale labor force was required to allow the country to prosper as much as possible. From 1750 to 1914, the status of women in Western Euope changed through an increase in employment opportunities and through the earning of women’s rights, however, female labor in designated households was invariably evident.
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.
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...
The film titled, “The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter”, looks at the roles of women during and after World War II within the U.S. The film interviews five women who had experienced the World War II effects in the U.S, two who were Caucasian and three who were African American. These five women, who were among the millions of women recruited into skilled male-oriented jobs during World War II, shared insight into how women were treated, viewed and mainly controlled. Along with the interviews are clips from U.S. government propaganda films, news reports from the media, March of Time films, and newspaper stories, all depicting how women are to take "the men’s" places to keep up with industrial production, while reassured that their duties were fulfilling the patriotic and feminine role. After the war the government and media had changed their message as women were to resume the role of the housewife, maid and mother to stay out of the way of returning soldiers. Thus the patriotic and feminine role was nothing but a mystified tactic the government used to maintain the American economic structure during the world war period. It is the contention of this paper to explore how several groups of women were treated as mindless individuals that could be controlled and disposed of through the government arranging social institutions, media manipulation and propaganda, and assumptions behind women’s tendencies which forced “Rosie the Riveter” to become a male dominated concept.
A Reversal of Fortunes? Women, work and change in East Germany. Rachel Alsop. Berghahn Books. 2000
... of the German Classic period, but a challenge to the idea of the limiting nature of femininity.
Friedan frustratingly explains how women’s choices to revert back to domestic roles after World War II compromised women’s independence and identity. Friedan uses this frustration to revive modern feminism and extinguish the prison that gender roles had imprisoned women in. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan illustrates how women fell into the common portrayal of a housewife just fifteen years after the war and how “millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school…their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers…”(Friedan 61) and other description that fit the occupation of “housewife”.