Roles of Women in The 1920s (Essay Example)

To a greater extent, the role of the majority of women in America did not change much in the 1920s compared to a smaller percentage of women in America who, to a lesser extent, did experience a change in their roles during the 1920s. 

The role of the majority of women did not change due to reasons of the professions they worked as farm wives or as steel and coal mine labourers. The majority of women who were housewives were already doing jobs that would normally be considered men's jobs before the 1920s as well as caring for children and doing household work, and this did not change for women during the 1920s as they were largely unaffected by new trends and changing expectations found in the cities. “Women who live on farms- and they form the largest group in the United States- do a great deal of work besides the labour of caring for their children, washing the clothes, caring for the home and cooking… thousands still labour in the fields… help milk the cows…”-Source 34. The second-largest group of American women consisted of unskilled labourers who not only had to take care of the children and carry out household duties but also had to work long shifts whilst being paid half of what the men at the time were earning which was already low and this did not change in the 1920s it increased due to women being cheaper labour(Source 32 limitations.) “The wages of these men are on the whole so small that wives must do double duty- that is, caring for the children and the home and toil on the outside as wage earners.”-Source 34. As we can see, the everyday lives mostly remained the same for these women and they did not experience change during the 1920s that directly affected the expectations these women were expected to follow in the rural areas these women often lived in.

Even for the lives of most middle-class women in America, nothing changed as the majority of these women, with the exception of the Flappers, followed a more conservative lifestyle and continued to raise their daughters in a way to fill these traditional roles. For many women believing that there should be equality among men and women seemed vague as they followed a traditional conservative belief of men and women having different places in society and this was often carried through into the way they raised their daughters leading to this idea to be carried into the future generations and because of this conservative mentality most of these women would never dream of going to the streets in the name of sexual discrimination and equality there were a few who did and these women became known as Flappers. (Though a few young upper-middle-class women in the cities talked about throwing off the older conventions- they were the flappers- most women stuck to more traditional attitudes concerning ‘their place’ … most middle-class women concentrated on managing the home… Their daughters far from taking to the streets against sexual discrimination were more likely to prepare for careers as mothers and housewives.”-Source 35. The conservative nature of most families limited the change happening for many women in America during the 1920s however, those who embraced it reaped the benefits.

Whilst the majority of women did not experience a change in their lives during the 1920s, a brief minority of women did and, due to them embracing this, their lives improved in many ways. The lives of these women changed in ways that should have been considered normal but were previously not, these changes included women being allowed to go out with men without a chaperone being present and the rules on clothing also eased as young women started to wear more daring and non-traditional outfits as well drinking and smoking in public with men also became normalised, women also began showing more affection in public as many started kissing in public which was seen as unfavourable before the 1920s. Films and ads also started targeting women with more daring portrayals of the lives of American women and ads started focusing heavily on women as they started controlling many of the buying decisions in households were starting to be made by women.-Source 31. The easing of the expectations and norms expected of women before 1920 paved the way for future progress to be made in gender equality in the household and in the workplace and it began to break the traditional views of many American households.

In conclusion, the role of women did change in the 1920s but not to a large enough extent compared to the amount of women who were unaffected by the changes made in the political system and the changing expectations put on them by the general public, whose views may have been varied due to the conservative nature of many of the families at the time.