Essay On Slacks And Calluses

It took ingenuity and resourcefulness to raise children and tend a home. They managed household budgets and calculated food supplies. On isolated farms, women delivered babies, nursed sick children, and tended to farm injuries. They planted vegetable gardens, cared for livestock, and helped harvest crops. Even wealthy women needed business and management skills to oversee large households that included servants or slaves.” This paragraph explains how women worked inside of their homes taking care of their family and family needs. In the 1800’s women felt that they were to work only inside their homes as wives and homemakers. In A Family Affair, paragraphs three and four state, “Many other women served as volunteers in organisations such as the American Red Cross. Red Cross members performed many helpful duties, including reading and writing letters for wounded or illiterate soldiers, unearthing information about family members during breakdowns in communication, organizing dances for servicemen, and simply making wartime more bearable both at home and overseas. Another volunteer group, the United Service Organizations (USO), provided social services, entertainment, and companionship for servicemen.” This paragraph explains how women worked outside of their homes. The passages are different because Breaking Tradition explains how women worked inside their homes during the war in the 1800’s. A Family Affair explains how the war changed women’s lives in the 1800’s, and as a result, they began working outside of their

“During the war about half of American women worked outside of their homes,”( Hughes 2). The number of working women rose from fourteen point six million in nineteen forty one to nineteen point four million in nineteen forty four. “Women were not just motivated by wages or patriotism; but buy the feeling of independence that they gained from the work,” (Hughes 2). Without women laborers the US economy would have never been able to produce military hardware to be successful in the war. Even though women played a huge role in the work force during the World War II, they also played an even bigger role in the war itself. Women played several different roles in the actual war. “A few of women’s roles in the actual war of World War II would be army nurses, spies, pilots and entertainers,” (Scott3). Women served as army nurses during World War 11, there were than seven thousand active nurses on duty when the United States entered the war. “Women also served as pilots, on September tenth nineteen forty two, Nancy Harkness Love, with the support of th U.S. Air Transport Command, organized twenty five women pilots into the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (W.A.F.S),” (Scott3). Women pilots were used to serve non- combat flights, to free the men for combat flights. “Women spies of the World WarII , they were often successful and unsuspected since people suspected women that women’s properly roles were solely domestic,” (Scott3). Lastly

One of the biggest roles of women in the second world war was working war factories. these were regular factories that had been converted to help the war effort. For example instead of making cars they would make tanks or instead of clothing the

Slacks and Calluses follows the story of two school teachers, Constance Bowman and Clara Marie Allen in San Diego in the summer of 1943. Constance Bowman was a journalist and a high school English teacher while Clara Marie Allen was a high school art teacher. To help for the war, they spent their entire summer vacation building bombers in a bomber factory. The book revealed a lot of information regarding the social class in the lives of women. There is enough evidence in the book to show that it does not support the idea that the country embraced the idea of women leaving the home to work in a factory to help with war efforts. The women in Slacks and Calluses mostly worked at the factories because they didn’t have many other opportunities.

During World War 1, a majority of the men were off in battle leaving only the women for the workforce. About 3 million of them went to work in places such as the several, scattered munition factories. Munition factories were places that manufactured materials for war, specifically weapons and ammo. While the pay at these factories was significantly better than what most women were used to, it was an extremely dangerous place to work, with the threat of death constantly present. Madeline Ida Bedford, despite being a middle class woman, perfectly demonstrated the point of view of one of these factory girls in her poem “Munition Wages”. The woman speaking in the poem was most likely a factory girl around the age of 16. She addresses the many concerns of working in such a factory and counters them with the glories of the money along with the “bracelets and jewellery/Rings envied by friends;”.

The structure of workforce changed, all out war effort and lack of working age male in factories brought women into factories across Europe in incomparable way. Thousands of women worked with the army as nurses and ambulance drivers, with nominal supplies and harsh condition of the front line, they helped wounded soldiers and provided some solace to the dying. Propaganda Picture by E.V. Kealy, P-524, on its poster says “Women of Britain say-GO” I think which means that all the men can go to the war and fight for the nation, while women are taking care of the house. War had changed role women were assigned to but they were refusing to go back to their old Victorian traditional role and challenged the gender status quo of the women after the war which completely changed the patriarchal European states, and American society as

Women had different perspectives during World War 2. Many served in different branches of armed forces. Some labored in war productions plants. Most women stayed at home and had other responsibilities to raise children, balance check books, and some labored in war-related office jobs, while the men went to war. In addition to factory work and other front jobs about 350,000 women joined the Armed services, serving at home and abroad. “Rosie the Riveter,” later became a popular propaganda for women. While women worked in a variety of positions closed to them the industry saw the greatest increase in female’s workers. More than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry in 1943,

Even though Rosie the Riveter is an image frequently synonymous with the contemporary women’s movement, she was not designed to promote social change or improve the role of women in the workplace during World War II. In reality, she was promoted as the ideal female worker and was patriotic, confident, capable, and beautiful in a large propaganda campaign by the United States government. Since the war caused many men to answer the call to serve in the military, both at home and abroad, the United States was faced with the urgent challenge of recruiting women into the workforce. Rosie the Riveter was their solution to this problem.

During the Second World War, both married and unmarried women worked in wartime industries and factories to take the place of men who joined the service. Although women didn’t play a significant role on the battlefields in Europe compared to males, it would be logical to conclude that women played an integral role in the participation and victory in WWII both at home and abroad. Yet when one considers their contribution, it is hard to imagine how much more they could have done given the conservative views of gender role at that time. In the context of traditional gender roles and boundaries, women conceivably maximized their wartime efforts by working in a variety of jobs including industry, volunteering, and serving as support staff for

Many people have never considered what women were doing in WWII when their husbands left to fight. Their lives weren’t easy or normal during the war. Women had to work just as hard as men, sometimes even more so. In this essay, I will discuss the position of American women before World War II, during the war, and at the end of the war.

World War II was the catalyst that changed the opportunities available to women and eventually the way they were regarded as a viable workforce. Suddenly women throughout the United States were pushing themselves to their limits to support the war effort. Women were fulfilling jobs and responsibilities that many previously believed to be impossible for their gender. Opportunities were opened in steel plants, ammunition factories, and even the United States military. As the war progressed the number of male workers declined dramatically. Society had no choice but to turn to the mothers, sisters, and daughters of our nation for help. The results for each woman varied

Ever since then women proved that they can work in a man’s workplace and do just as well. Any job that was a man’s, was a women’s as well. Women were soon “the most needed workers of all” according to Brenda Ralf Lewis. Factory workers became known as “the soldiers without guns”. If women hadn’t stepped up to the line, winning the war wouldn’t have been as easy as it was for us. Not only did the women in factories and shipyards have a big part in doing their part in the war contributions, but so did the women who were out on the field fighting alongside with their men risking their very life.

As more men entered the armed forces, women needed to replace them. By the war's end, hundreds of thousands of women had entered the workforce, many of them in traditionally masculine occupations such as engineering, munitions, transport, business, and eventually even the military. The war produced a leap in women's employment from twenty-six percent in the workforce in 1914 to thirty-six percent by 1918. One million women worked in munition industries, forty-thousand served as nurses, and twenty-thousand joined the Women's Land Army as agricultural workers (Marwick, 1977). For the young and the middle-class, work outside their homes was indeed a new experience. On the other hand, working-class women were used to paid work, but the type of work was new. Many left low-skill, low-wage jobs, especially in domestic service, for better paying skilled labor in factories and workshops (Kent, 1993).

The role of women in war has varied significantly throughout British History. During world War 1 womens role was constricted as many worked in the industry of textiles , knitting and munitions. This said they played a pivotal role in the war effort as 23.8 million in britain were all working. Voluntary and paid positions were taken up as unfamiliar roles to women, Nevertherless this was recquired in order to sustain the living of many families. World War 1 illustrated the capability of women in wokring across a variety of fields. However the effort from women was arguably taken out of context. Despite the rise in pay , women still earned less then men. They held the responisibility of working as a generation of men went to fight. This covered munitions, police patrols and even nursing.Women worked in horendous conditions and accidents were far too frequent in factories. A TNT plant killed 73 people and also leading to the destruction of nearby homes. Furthermore the collective effort was extraordinary , the workers of one factory in Gloucestershire within the four years filled over 17 million shells(BBC world war 1).Opportunities in civil service increased by 1,751 %.

For the past three years, the number of women factory workers have grown largely. In a munitions factory in Brantford, Ontario, many women; young and old, have been dedicated to their hard work. Now, in September 1917, exposure to the harsh environment of a munitions factory, to support loved ones, is just another routine.