Women's Roles In World War II

Women have been fighting for equality since the beginning of time and the women during World War II were like pioneers who helped women make a huge step in the direction for equality. Some believe that the roles of women in World War II brought only negative issues; however, the roles of women changed so immensely during World War II and made many positive contributions to women 's fight for Equality. Some of the roles of women in World War II are the following: the role of working, the role of a mother, the gender roles, the patriotic role, the military roles, and the role of propaganda. Before the war women were thought as only having the capacity to achieve the status of a homemaker or housewife, but World War II changed that whole idea

Women not only were expected to act as a housewife, but dress as what an ideal housewife would look like. Since women were starting to put down their oven mits and pick up some work gloves they had to change the way they dressed because skirts and dresses were not safe for women in factories to be working all day in. So women started to wear pants and most people did not like the idea of women wearing trousers, but ultimately it was for the safety of the women working. Hall, Orzanda, and Lopez-Gydosh said, “Pants were adopted by many women out of necessity, for munitions work and similar hardworking activities. This change of dress is symbolic of the change in American women’s roles during the war” (2015, p. 237). Women started to change the idea that only men could wear pants and made a huge advancement in gender roles for women. Even though women only wore pants for work purposes they still changed the idea that women could only be feminine if they were wearing a dress or a skirt. This change might seem trivial to some, but this change helped bring equality to how all American women dressed in the past and dress in the

The media used propaganda for many reason, but the media used propaganda directed towards women a lot in World War II. The media did this to raise moral, to get women to volunteer, and to start getting jobs. An article discussed one of the most famous uses of propaganda from World War II which was Rosie the Riveter. This article talked about how Rosie was a symbol for American women to start working and to help the war effort on the home front. Rosie was a symbol to women that they could achieve this task and to show everyone how tough women are (Rupp, 2004, p. 53). Without the use of propaganda then women might not have put all their efforts in helping the war. Women might not have taken those factory jobs or they might not have worked so hard to earn their spot in the military groups for women. They felt the duty to take on these roles because people were telling them they should and that they