Thesis:
The shortage of labor during WWI and WWII offered many women in the United States unprecedented opportunities that positively impacted women's rights.
Topic Sentence:
Women were allowed to occupy vacant factory roles left by men. Without many of the male workforce, many factory jobs traditionally left for them became vacant. To cater to this vacant workforce, many propaganda hoping to aid the war effort targeted females. The first occurrence is in WWI from the poster Wake Up America! Civilization calls every man, woman, and child! (Wake Up America! Civilization calls every man, woman, and child! James Montgomery Flagg, 1917, https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.40985/). This poster called for the support of every man, woman, and child
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Suffrage is probably one of the most important rights that females received in the 20th century. The war effort was a major contributor to supporting suffrage because it proves that women are capable of doing things that males did. It was also a way to reward many of the women who actively helped the U.S. during WWI. Many women utilized their contributions to help bolster their suffrage cause. One poster campaigning for women's suffrage uses the contributions of women during WWI as a selling tool to convince people to support women's suffrage (poster for the New York state campaign for voting rights for women, 1917, https://news.stanford.edu/2020/08/12/world-war-strengthened-womens-suffrage/). The war essentially gave women an argument for why they deserved suffrage. It shows them as capable and strong-willed like their male counterparts. In turn, it bolsters their argument for suffrage. In another pro-suffrage flier, they use the war effort to convince people of their struggles. ( Who shares the cost of war?1915, Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, https://lewissuffragecollection.omeka.net/items/show/1471). All of these struggles are tied to women, yet despite all this, women do not have a say in the government at all. The flier uses the struggles and turmoils of war to further argue for the need for female suffrage as how can women who are affected most by government actions (war) not have a say in it at all. These two examples, thus show how the war greatly allowed women to bolster their argument for women's