The 20th Century has been the period where women in society have got the chance to be ‘accepted’ in various divisions such as labour, military and voting. I think that the period where war had a drastic effect on the role of women was in the First and Second World War. However, I believe that the war did effect the role of women in many ways, but this only lasted for the period of war. In order to examine how the war effected the role of women in society, we must examine what were the roles of women before the wars. In the years preceding the War women had been employed mainly in service oriented jobs, such as waitress, working as secretaries, laundresses, telephone operators, dishwashers along with doing light industrial work in garment factories and teaching. This statement clearly indicates that women were excluded from jobs which were ‘reserved’ for men. These included jobs in heavy industry such as production of cars, ships, steel, etc. There was a legitimate reason for this as many people believed that lifting steel for example, was not the job for women. This was total discrimination of women, and resulted them to do service oriented jobs. Most men believed that women’s place for in the home, taking care of the family and doing chores. As soon as war arrived, the role of women in society had clearly changed. The author of www.historyplace.com, stated in his ‘Women and War’ page that propaganda played an important role in changing the roles of women in society. I clearly agrees with this as propaganda which appeared in newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts, movies and advertisements generally portrayed women as white, middle-class housewives and women who were dependent on men. This occurred significantly, in the United States where propaganda blamed “working mothers for the destruction of the family, the argument being that they were not home taking care of the children, cooking...
