“I’ve gone from building an aircraft for the war and living my dream, balancing being a mum and a job to spending my days cooking with my child hanging off my leg.” I know that I am not alone in this experience. In fact, the Second World War saw over six million women take over jobs that had previously been held by men. These jobs included welding, machining, building aircraft, repairing tanks, and working in armament factories. Acquiring these jobs was a huge step forward for women in the twentieth century, but these jobs have unjustly been returned to men. These women, myself included, have worked diligently and proactively to ensure that the war effort was successful. The men have now returned from their posts on the front line. These men have forced their way back and stolen our jobs away from us. We have been and still are a part of this country’s …show more content…
A survey carried out on women in 1944 by the US Women’s Bureau found that seventy-five percent of them planned to keep working in the postwar period. In addition to this figure, the survey also concluded that 84% of the women employed in manufacturing wanted to keep their factory jobs”. This survey was not a stand-alone with surveys carried out during the war on women who had a job “consistently found that the overwhelming majority of women war workers intended to continue working after the war and to stay in the same line of work”. However, the actions post-war from these women didn’t match these surveys with the return of the men from the frontline resulting in a large decrease in the population of women in jobs across the country. Statistics from “vphibbswomensroles” show that a year after World War II ended, “three and a half million women had voluntarily or involuntarily left the labour force”. These are women who have successfully helped to maintain and run this country of ours throughout a World War and have been rewarded with being sent back to
Communities conducted scrap metal drives. To help build the armaments necessary to win the war, women found employment as electricians, welders and riveters in defense plants.” The attack changed the way Americans lived. Women found jobs and food, clothes, gas and many other resources had to be rationed. There had to be enough for them and to give supplies to the men over
DBQ # 3 World War II was a major turning point for California and we were still in the Great Depression. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and that is when World War II begun. The conflict took many lives and destroyed a lot of land and property for the next six years. As a result of World War II there was a change in California with the labor for women, scrap metal, and the Japanese Americans.
The Civil War was a series of battles fought from 1861 to 1865 between the North, the Union, and the South, the Confederacy, of the United States of America over the disagreements on the acceptance of slavery. It was a long fought war with high casualties on both sides. Due to that, even more civilians were needed to become soldiers, spies, and etc. Men were always the ones that were expected to fill those positions, despite some of them not wanting to. Women were expected to stay home as the men in their life left for the war.
(pbs.org) But a source of labor was high in demand since most of the men left to fight in the war. This opened up many opportunities for the minorities in America, especially women. Before the war, women didn’t have outside jobs. Their role was to tend to family affairs and stay at home while the husband worked to make a living.
The 20th century saw a major increase in women’s rights, getting a step nearer to gender equality. It is defined as the act of treating men and women equally, having the same access to right and opportunities no matter the gender. Although it is not a reality in our world, we do have advanced in comparison to the last century. At the begging of the 20th century women still were considered the weak gender. Their education consisted on learning practical skills such as sewing, cooking, and using the new domestic inventions of the era; unfortunately, this “formal training offered women little advantage in the struggle for stable work at a liveable wage” (1).
When the men went off to fight in World War II, women took over their jobs to aid the war effort by joining organisations which allowed the men to be recruited into the war as soldiers. For the
The statement that “the Home Front during World War II provided many social groups in American society an opportunity for advancement that they would not have otherwise had” is somewhat valid since not all social groups received such opportunities. Women are a specific example of a group that benefitted economically and socially from the war. Advertisements and propaganda encouraged women who had never entered the workforce before to “find their war job” (Doc. 2). New jobs had opened
Now, they are able to say that women also did a good job in the war
Constance Bowman Reid presents several captivating observations and narratives about being a woman working in a World War II bomber factory in her memoir Slacks & Calluses. Reid and her friend and fellow teacher Clara Marie, referred to as C.M., decided to spend their summer vacation assisting the allied war effort by working the swing shift at a local aircraft factory. Because of their gender, Reid and C.M were forced to challenge many presumptions and biases that the factory supervisors had about their abilities. Despite proving to be strong workers, the duo had to deal with sexism within the workplace and in the world around them. Due to her unique social positioning, Reid offers an unparalleled perspective on several wartime issues that in total provide a comprehensive story with spectacular historical value.
Yet, women were expected to set aside their personal beliefs to insure that America could still make further advancements without its men. However, women still complied because they knew the responsibility laid with them to keep the nation running. Still, much of propaganda had a purpose to motivate women to lend a helping hand in the war. As Susan Mathis said, “The patriotic appeal had two aspects… ‘do your part’... ‘a soldier may die if you don’t do your part’...”
But what is rarely mentioned is all the behind the scenes work women were responsible for while men were off fighting in the military. The war disrupted their ordinary lives, and the everyday roles men were employed in needed to be filled. Women throughout the United States assumed untraditional roles to so that life would continue, now being involved in politics, factories, businesses, commanding the household, and helping during
In the article it says that women entered jobs like engineering, other professions, and manufacturing jobs that many people believed that those jobs were too dangerous for women and women were too weak. In their jobs, women made airplanes, warships, munitions, and tanks working in technical and scientific fields. Also, after the war, women were still employed as secretaries, waitresses, or in other clerical jobs. This was often called the “pink collar” force. This article shows how sometimes women are given clerical jobs that show people underestimate the abilities of women.
In the book written by (Gavin, 1997) it was cited that “As women took over from their absent men in hundreds of new and challenging occupations, many of which had previously been considered inappropriate”. From the beginning of the World War 1, the German women were participating a great deal. They contributed to half a million-people working on the munitions manufacturing alone (Gavin, 1997). It also mentioned in the book that over in the U.S, the men in charge refused to let the women participate up until April 1917 (Gavin, 1997). The U.S government never formally authorize the enrolment of women, despite Army officials repeatedly asking for such personnel’s.
The war had provided a variety of employment opportunities for women and the most common job for women was at home, working in factories and filling in positions for their husbands, fathers, and brothers in their absence. Although the highest demand for workers were in previously male-dominated
During World War II, women had taken men’s jobs while they