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Summary on "Roaring 20's"
The roaring 20's was also described as the "Age of Jazz", meaning the era of relaxation or turning inward after a horrible war. After WWI ended, Americans did not want to enter into any other foreign conflicts. America declared neutrality once again. While the "Roaring 20's" was the era of taking a breather and having a good time, it was also the era of the development on entertainment, advertising and consumerism. It was a decade of prosperity.
1918-1929: "Roaring 20's" and the Interwar Years
During the war (WWI): women took the opportunity to take up jobs from factories and fields that the men have left while they went off for war. However, WWI caused a split in the women’s progressive movement.
1) Some were pacifists, meaning they were opposed to being involved with helping out America with the war and to work along with women in the war effort. By not being involved with the war, they demonstrated by going on hunger strikes and marches.
2) The largest part of the suffrage movement, which represented by the National Women Suffrage Association, supported Wilson’s war. As women wanted to have equal rights, Wilson would argue back by stating that women should take part of the war effort and they could talk about bringing democracy to women.
Proving themselves with hard work, President Wilson was impressed and saw how they affected the war. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified to give all American women the right to vote. Since the first suffrage movement in Seneca Falls in 1848, it had been their top goal. However, to achieve full equality, women still had a long way to go.
Because women started entering the workforce in larger numbers and demeaning their rights on the job, the Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor was created after the war. Its role was to protect women in workplaces. Some women workers gave up their war jobs and went back to their “traditional” role of being a mother.
The new trend of high fashion for women in the 1920's,
called the "flappers".
During the 1920’s, there were events that made a mark in women’s citizenship roles
1) Women would go to the cities to find the opportunities to find employment. However, they would receive the short end of the stick; they would be given low-paying jobs and what men would consider “women’s work” (which was office typing and retail clerking).
2) There was an organized birth-control movement that was to receive the right to use a drug or device to help prevent pregnancy
3) The campaigning from the National Women’s party for an Equal Rights amendment in the constitution
4) Prohibition was important progressive reform movement that women strongly supported ever since the Civil War. It would later become an Amendment (18th) in 1919 to make alcohol illegal.
From the viewpoint of the American society, some would state how the world suddenly went crazy. A statement like this would make a sense that most of America was not ready to give equality to women and that they just went mad.
Out of all this, a cultural and fashion trend emerge that defined the era, the "Jazz age" and "flappers". These were symbolic of women's new found independence and sexual freedom.