Women and the dry cause:
Prior to the flapper, all American women were expected to support temperance and Prohibition, with the assumption those who did not were immoral. In the 1920s, this fell apart because urban working-class women were among the first to oppose Prohibition.
The “drys” campaigning for Prohibition claimed good women did not drink liquor, despite the prevalence of drinking among bourgeois women in the nineteenth century. Despite contrary evidence, dry propaganda held that only prostitutes and the selfish daughters of the rich drank illegally. Most women were seen as too responsible to drink.
One woman’s temperance leader posited in her book that “men think logically, women biologically”; therefore women would not oppose Prohibition because of a
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Many women formed political organisations opposing the Volstead Act.
Flappers:
The flapper shocked American society at the time because she defied ideas of traditional American womanhood. Flappers rebelled against holdovers of Victorian sexual morality by giving themselves social equality with men, even in matters of sexuality and drinking.
The flapper’s appearance on the scene changed a formerly all-male drinking culture. The new nightclubs and cabarets went out of their way to appeal to women, whether with their decor or by hiring attractive male bartenders to appeal to female customers. Even the drinks of the time were feminised, with sweet and colourful cocktails replacing whiskey shots and beer.
One journalist noted it was common to see "women smoking in hotel dining rooms, bare female legs on the public beaches…taking the lady's arm instead of letting her take yours."
Some feminists saw the flapper as consumer conformity; women using their freedom to compete for a husband. Women reformers thought the flapper threatened the family and went against all the women’s rights movement had stood