Women Throughout and After the Second World War - Essay Example

An Examination of American and British Representation of Women throughout and After the Second World War Women throughout and After the Second World War 1 Contents 1 Introduction 2 2 A Call from Forces 3 2.2 American Women 3 2.2.1 Role in Military Services 3 2.2.2 Army Nurse Corp 4 2.2.3 Women Army Corp 5 2.2.4 Women in Air Force 7 3.2 British Women 9 3 Role of Media and Government 13 4 Effect of War on Women 15 5 Bibliography 17 Women throughout and After the Second World War 2 1 Introduction The stress put on American and British industry by the battle machine were massive. With about ten million men at war and the rest of the male inhabitants at job, it was apparent that the only way America would be capable to succeed the war was if it signed up great numbers of women for employment or services offered by them. America and British both wanted its women to go to job to construct planes, tanks and ships as required to battle with Hitler. World War two, more so than any other war, was a war based on manufacturing, and so it was moment to take American women into industry. So the government authorities collaborated with the industry, the media and womens associations in an effort to support them to join the workforce by telling women it was their partisan responsibility to go to work. But devotion was not the just an encouragement for the women that the War Manpower Commission used to draw in women into the labor force. A lot of employment plans used the idea of augmented economic success to draw women into the labor force. In reality, a number of posters went so far away to glamorize war employment, in addition to pressurize the significance of women functioning in non-traditional professions. This paper will look at the innovative part that women unspecified once the war started, the troubles that they face together within the home and on work, even including women after the world war two and the consequences that the war had on them. Women throughout and After the Second World War 2 2 A Call from Forces Trying to grasp the home front mutually as there was a war waging overseas was not a simple duty. Women were not just requested to complete the everyday jobs that were in general waiting for them, but they were told to go to job. Unexpectedly, their very personal lives were curved into a very open and nationalistic reason. The modifications that women experienced in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s would be sensed by the generations to come. Usually the women position was considered to be in the house. She was accountable for food preparation, cleaning, taking care of the kids and looking her best. So when the war busted out, it was obvious that the America would not be capable to succeed the war devoid of the aid of their women, the habitual housewife and mother turned out to be the “wartime worker.”1 Still a great deal of the misinformation of the time used touching plea corresponding with nationalism. Women were continuously being repeated that their husbands, sons and brothers were at risk as they were not getting the provisions they required. Mottos for instance “Victory is in Your Hands,” or “We can do it!” and “Women the war needs you!” were all exploited to encourage women that their states need were more significant than their own console2. Consequently of the propaganda American women, whether they were provoked by nationalism, economic reimbursement, sovereignty, social dealings or inevitability, united with the labor force. In July 1944, when the war was at the climax, about 19 million women were working in the United States, more than ever before3. However, the posters and forms of billboard used to organize the women into the labor force strained the provisional and imperative nature of the state. Women throughout and After the Second World War 3 2.1 American Women 2.2.1 Role in Military Services Women served in a lot of situations circumlocutory hold up of military efforts. Military women were disqualified from combat positions, but that didnt keep a number of them from being in tribulations way, nurses in or close to battle zones or on ships, for example, however, some of them were killed. A lot of women became nurses, or exploited their nursing knowledge, in the war endeavor. A few of them became Red Cross nurses. Others served in military nursing components. Approximately, 74,000 women served in the American and British Army and Navy Nurse Corps in World War two. Women in addition served in various military branches, frequently in fixed womens work, such as office jobs or cleaning. Many of them took customary mens posts in non-combat effort, to liberated more men for the battle. More than 1,000 women served as pilots linked with the U.S. Air Force in the Women Air force Service Pilots (WASP), but were judged as civil service workers, and werent identified for their armed service until the 1970’s. Britain and the Soviet Union as well used vital figures of women pilots to sustain their air forces4. Although several million women were hired, they were not inevitably treated equal as their male equivalents. In 1942, the National War Labor Board tried to remove some of the long lasting dissimilarities in women’s pay, when they determined to use similar pay standard. According to the NWLB, women would be remunerated similar as men for the same or equal work. Conversely, these principles were rarely implemented. The majority of employers thought that the customary women’s pay level was satisfactory, and some stated that there was no need to formulate women’s pay similar to men’s as women’s job was effortless. Women throughout and After the Second World War 4 But this was distant from the case5. Women who united with the workforce as a result of World War Two were frequently referred to as a production army. Their typical work week was 48 hours, although a lot of women often worked overtime, and nearly all holidays and festivals were cancelled. Women of all ages functioned laree derricks which were exploited to shift heavy tanks and weaponry. Some women loaded and fired machine guns, other armaments to confirm that they work properly. Most of the women managed hydraulic presses, while some labored as unpaid assistant fire fighters. Some women who previously worked as saleswomen, maids or waitresses, took over more necessary tasks for example welders, riveters, drill press operatives and taxi drivers. Women instituted themselves in contributing in every feature of the war industry from manufacturing military clothes to constructing fighter jets, American women labored day and night6. 2.2.2 Army Nurse Corp More than 59,000 American nurses served in the Army Nurse Corps throughout World War Two. Nurses worked nearer to the front lines than they ever had previously. Inside the “chain of evacuation” instituted by the Army Medical Department throughout the war. Nurses served beneath fire in field of hospitals and emigration hospitals, on hospital trains and hospital ships and as air travel nurses on medical transportation planes. The ability and devotion of these nurses donated to the enormously low post wound death rate amongst American armed forces in every phase of the war. Women throughout and After the Second World War 5 In general, less than 4% of the American soldiers who expected medical care in the field or experienced mass departure expired from wounds or sickness7. The wonderful manpower requirements faced by the United States all through World War Two shaped into several new social and economic prospects for American women. Together society as one and the United States armed forces found a growing number of positions for women. As huge numbers of women came into the industry and many of the jobs for the first time, the demand for nurses illuminated the position of the nursing profession8. The army imitated this altering approach in June 1944 when it granted its nurse’s officials payments and full retirement rights, dependent payments and same pay like men. Furthermore, the government offered free education to nursing apprentices amid 1943 and 1948. Military service acquired men and women from little towns and large cities athwart America and transported them all around the globe. Their time of war experiences expanded their lives in addition to their opportunities. After the war, many veterans, as well as nurses, took benefit of the increased educational chances offered for them by the government. World War Two distorted American society irreversibly and redefined the rank and prospects of the specialized nurses9. Women throughout and After the Second World War 6 2.2.3 Women Army Corp More than 150,000 American women served in the Womens Army Corps (WAC) and in Womens Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) throughout World War Two. Associates of the WAC were the primary women other than nurses to serve inside the lines of the United States Army. Both the armed forces and the American public at first had trouble for accommodating the thought of women in uniform. However, political and military influential, faced with combating a two-front war and providing men and materiel for that war whereas continuing to send lend lease material to the associates, comprehended that women could provide further resources which so dreadfully required in the armed forces and industrial zones10. The Womens Army Corps (WAC) was the womens subdivision of the U.S. military. It was formed as an auxiliary unit, the Womens Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942, and rehabilitated to a complete position as the WAC in 1943. Its initial administrator was Oveta Culp Hobby, a famous politician who served as United States Secretary of health care, education, and wellbeing in Dwight Eisenhowers cabinet. Whilst the majority of the women served stateside, a number of them went to variety of places around the globe, as well as Europe, North Africa and New Guinea. Some men were terrified that if women turned into Territorial Army they would no longer serve in a male defend and their manliness would be diminish. A lot of them feared being derived into battle units if women took over the not so dangerous jobs11. General Douglas Macarthur labeled the WAC’s as “my finest soldiers”, adding that they worked harder, criticized less and were better regimented than men12. Women throughout and After the Second World War 7 A lot of generals demanded more of them and planned to draft women but it was understood that this would aggravate significant public protest and congressional disagreement plus the War Department refused to take such a radical step. Those 150,000 women that served opened the comparable of seven units of men for battle. Throughout the same time phase, other units of the U.S. armed forces had parallel women’s units. The WAC was scattered in 1978. Since then, women in the U.S. military have served in the similar units as men, although they have just been permitted in or near war conditions since 1994 when Defense Secretary, Les Aspin, passed an order for the elimination of “considerable risk of imprison” from the record of grounds for not including women from certain military divisions13. 2.2.4 Women in Air Force Women in Air Force (WAF) was created in 1948, when President Truman passed the Womens Armed Services Integration Act, permitting women to serve openly in the armed forces. But restricted the group to 300 officials and 4,000 signing on women. In June 1976, women were accepted into the service on much the similar circumstances as were men. WAF was different from the Womens Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), a diminutive group of female transport pilots that was established in 1942 with Nancy H. Love as commandant. WAFS was creased into the Women Air force Service Pilots (WASPs) in 1943, although WASP was dispersed in December, 194414. Women throughout and After the Second World War 8 After more than a few times refusing suggestions to use trained women pilots for flying tasks, AAF Commanding General Henry H Arnold decided to the development of two groups intended to help in assembling the requirement for pilots to transport airplane. The Womens Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) and the Womens Flying Training Detachment were together stimulated in September 1942. The first group was considered to use previously qualified women aviators to transport airplane for the Air Corps Ferrying Command and afterward the Air Transport Service. The next was to take in a rigorous training course to educate women to restore men in a several flying responsibilities. On August 5, 1943, the WAFS and the pilot apprentices were combined into one group, Women’s Air force Service Pilots (WASP), directed by Jacqueline Cochran. Training of women pilots headed the amalgamation, and by November 1942 apprentices, who previously were requisite to have a personal pilot license plus 200 hours of flight time, were acknowledged devoid of previous flying practice. Majority of the training, fundamentally equivalent to that specified to the male aviation trainees, was carried out at Avenger Field, Sweetwater TX. The WASP pilot training agenda had 1,074 former students who transport airplanes, together with bombers and fighters, dragging the targets for gunnery and served as apparatus teachers in the Eastern Flying Training Command15. WASP director Cochran and General Arnold expected to militarize and charge the WASP pilots, but by late 1944, the civilizing military circumstances and poorer than anticipated erosion rates amongst male pilots condensed the requirement for female pilots. Women throughout and After the Second World War 9 The WASP association was finished on December 20, 1944, with the final graduating class. WASP associates stayed civil service workers who did not receive reimburse and advantages given to male pilots sharing the similar danger16. In 1967, President Johnson passed a Public Law 90-130, lifting rank limitations and strength restrictions on women in the armed forces. 1973 saw the end of discriminating service “the draft”, which means armed forces enlisting practices were starting to experience essential transformation. In 1976, women were acknowledged into the armed forces on much the similar basis as men, although the disconnected position of WAF was eliminated. That same year, the United States Air Force Academy started training female pilots17. 3.2 British Women It was for all time clear, however, that this time volunteering was not going to assemble the stress of wartime production. From 1941, each and every woman in Britain aged 18 from 60 had to be listed and their family professions were documented. Every one was interrogated and requisite to decide from a variety of occupations, though it was stressed that women would not be essential to tolerate armaments. Many women, though, were ultimately desired to work and pass away under the shoot. In December 1941, the National Service Act No.2 prepared the recruitment of women officially permitted18. Women throughout and After the Second World War 10 In the beginning, just solitary women aged 20 to 30 were drafted, nevertheless, by the mid of 1943, approximately 90% of single women and 80% of married women were working in indispensable work for the war effort. The majority of women, who volunteered earlier than the war, left into civil defense or the Womens Land Army. The foremost civil defense services were Air Raid Precautions (ARP), the fire service and Womens Voluntary Services (WVS). Firstly, the women mostly brought out secretarial work, but their jobs extended to meet the requirement19. The WVS was the major single women’s association of its time. It was created to maintain civil defense and to give services that were not offered close by the other organizations, and had more than one million associates. Typical WVS assistance incorporated organizing evacuations, protections, clothing exchanges and mobile devices. The Womens Land Army or in other words Scottish Land Army was restructured in 1938, for the women to be educated in agricultural employment, parting male employees free to go to war. Most WLA associates were youthful women from the townships and cities20. In the 1930’s, social characters were evidently distinct. A woman’s place was in the house, a man’s place was out at job. It was suitable for women to work exterior from the home if they had no family to look after, but they were remunerated lower than men were even when doing the similar work. Earlier than the war, almost five million women in the United Kingdom had salaried services, but most would have projected to leave the moment they got married, or when they had their first baby. With the beginning of war, the whole thing changed21. Women throughout and After the Second World War 11 Fathers maybe united with the armed forces, or were sent far away to do very important civilian employment, so mothers frequently ran the house on her own plus had to get used to departing to work, as well. Young single women, mostly away from dwellings for the first time, may be billeted miles from their relatives. Flexible functioning hours, nurseries and other provision almost immediately became ordinary to hold the requirements of operational women with children. Shortly, women made up one third of the whole labor force in the metal and chemical businesses, plus in ship construction and automobile manufacture. They labored on the railways, vessels and on buses. Women constructed Waterloo Bridge in London. However, armed forces approaches and lines inclined fashions at the start of the war. Women frequently wore trousers, or a one piece siren outfit. Headdress became useful, seen as a way of keeping hair out of the mode somewhat than as a fashion statement22. Knitting turned into a nationwide female fascination. A variety of systems gave suggestion on reprocessing or making clothes last longer. Hair was worn lengthy, but off the face. As war portrayed to be close, women implemented the “Victory Roll”, where the hair was turned up firmly, permanent in place and topped with a swept up curl. The well-liked understanding was that such female strokes increased confidence, equally for women and for the men all around them. The useful demands of wartime distorted social society away from all gratitude. People took pleasure in far better social liberty than before, with more chances for encounters with associates of the opposed sex and a feeling that customary rules did not relate in the face of so much looming risk. The disadvantage to such new occasions was the raise in numbers of populace with venereal sickness23. Women throughout and After the Second World War 12 Being, or having an unlawful child were generally intolerable then, but even so, there was a vast raise in the amount of children born to lone mothers throughout the war. Nevertheless, more and more open sex education did mean that inhabitants finished the war far better informed about this subject than they might have or else have been. However, the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) was produced in 1938. Its first plan was to employ 25,000 female volunteers for energetic, secretarial and common tasks. The huge group of women in the ATS served in opposed to aircraft command, on searchlights. They also labored in diverse batteries on anti-aircraft weapons but were not legitimately permitted to fire them24. The Womens Royal Naval Service (WRNS) was rehabilitated in1939. Women aged 18 to 50 and residing close to naval harbors could apply. The WRNS preserved vessels of the Royal Navy and were caught up in some of the most clandestine preparation for the war. The Womens Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) was formed in July 1939. Amongst several other duties, they enhanced the figures in the Royal Observer Corps, and in upholding as well as flying barrage hot-air balloons. Some, mostly from the charitable First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, labored with the Special Operations Executive, tumbling into rival country and functioning as saboteurs, messengers and radio machinists. Somewhere else in a foreign country, female nurses in armed forces field hospitals toiled close to the front line of combat and many served with associated forces for instance Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF). Women in addition came to Britain as associates of other linked forces, for example the Women’s Australian Air Force, and its Canadian and American correspondents. At its climax, the British auxiliary armed forces consisted of almost half a million members. Women throughout and After the Second World War 13 Employment posters demonstrated women as alluring and self-governing, plus the images of women, particularly in uniform, were used to trade everything from cigarettes to shoes. In the cinema, women were generally portrayed as sensible and talented. Womens help to the war effort were highlighted in the media and journals, plus auxiliary armed forces displayed frequently all the way through towns25. 3 Role of Media and Government Advertisements described them as “armed forces in housedresses.” Produce for Victory posters pushed their labor as significant to the war endeavor. Illustrators such as Norman Rockwell portrayed their self-confidence in their aptitude to earn and succeed a worldwide war. Certainly, early in World War Two, majority of Americans and British understood that women would be necessary to winning the war. It was the environment of World War Two that caused the United States government to mark womens employment for the war effort. Americans, for instance, battled the war on two fronts, in the South Pacific in opposition to Japan and in Europe next to the Nazis, and therefore required to draft noteworthy figures of American and British men to battle The Nazi strong hold over Europe also destined that a few number of countries could provide the armed forces essential foodstuffs and weapons on their individual battle fronts26. Performing as the promotional support of the government, mass media, mainly magazines and movies, crashed a clarion call for women to unite with the effort, to struggle in the war in any way they could. Women throughout and After the Second World War 14 In turn, women reacted in irresistible figures and in ways far dissimilar from World War One as their relationship to the government had changed since 1918. Before August, 1920, women’s communications with the government were intervened through husbands, fathers and sons. But with their right to vote settled up with the passage of the 19th Amendment, women anticipated their role in politics generally and in World War Two mainly in necessarily different ways. The media harped on this, therefore the unity of ads advertising women as “armed forces in housedresses.” There were three most important ways that women donated their labor considerably and significantly to the war effort, jobs that the media endorsed through advertisements, flyers and movie shorts. The primary was in relationship with the armed forces where women’s military auxiliaries filled jobs left open by the draft. The second were the ranch women and housewives who wrestled the war from their kitchens and gardens, labor that Produce for Victory posters particularly advertisements. Picturing their kitchens as their individual personal battlefronts, these women occupied in what historians call household loyalty, where women applied their aptitude to can, cook, defend, sew and save to present the goods essential to winning the war27. By growing Victory Gardens, by container fruit and vegetables plus by keeping collection of chickens, women saw to it that their independence would protect the preponderance of goods for American and British forces out of the country. These women also intended for their children and their society’s hard work in fighting the war, normally through saving efforts, through collection forces and through the Red Cross. Women throughout and After the Second World War 15 Media called the women who worked in important industry “Rosie the Riveter,” the third way they donated to the war effort. Even though, women had worked in industrial units since they had been originated in the early nineteenth century, a sex isolated labor market had directed women into jobs then measured more suitable to their supposed skills. Therefore, during World War Two, waitresses, area store clerks, secretaries and factory employees from small industry gathered to the enhanced paying jobs presented by those companies for building aircrafts, vessels and tanks. But women initiated that pay was only one advantage of their latest jobs. Nationalism also played an important role since investigating a group of rubber or fascinating a ship wall appeared to bring loved ones home faster. Women also discovered that they were fine at their jobs though worried about “double duty,” work throughout the day and homework at night, overwhelmed a lot of them. At the end of the war, media and the government united together again to endorse a new role for women. No longer were they critical to the attempt to succeed a new war, the up and coming Cold War with Russia. Now womens struggle was desirable at home. Even though women who labored in huge industries were fired from their work, they stayed in the labor force in increasingly greater numbers28. 4 Effect of War on Women When American and British achieved success in August of 1945, millions of inhabitants celebrated. The war was at last over and millions of men would finally be capable to go back to their homes. Women throughout and After the Second World War 16 Though, when the combating stopped, the war mechanism, which had assembled millions of women to work was finished. No longer was there a requirement for women to leave their husband and kids to work eight hours in a industrial unit, they could formerly stay at their dwelling and take care of their children. But for some women this just wasnt sufficient any longer. The progress of war, economy had given women more liberty than they had ever had previously. For the first time, women were capable to knowledge some kind of communal and economic mobility29. Rapidly, women were faced with alternatives and by working out on these alternatives they were proficient to discover their own independence and sovereignty. With the war over and the disintegrate of the war mechanism, women who were advised to go to work to sustain their state were now in danger of losing their work. However, the future of women’s position in the labor force did not depend only on the condition of the post war economy; in reality a great deal of it would depend on the women themselves. For the past three years during the war, women were directed to work for long hours, little reimbursement, low cost and low class child care amenities, not to mention approximately unparalleled physical stress, it was probable, that for a lot of women losing their career was a lucky thing30. The truth was that only time would tell how women would act in response to the postwar era. Another issue in choosing the postwar position for women in the labor force was public judgment. A lot of people just assumed that American and British women would now go back to their homes happily. More still observed that the American and British homemaker turned “manufacturing soldier” would realize that her place was a sequential as a soldiers. Women throughout and After the Second World War 17 They articulated that millions of men were requested to put down their job to become a part of the armed forces and when the war was ended they were anticipated to go back home to work. The reality of the issue is that there was no one normally scarcity comeback to the postwar period. The alternatives that women made and the causes why they made them were as exclusive and individual as they were themselves. A number of women were happy when the war ended because that meant that they could go back to the home where they felt they belonged. Many women went back home not for the reason that they desired to, other than because of their husband and a lot of the people believed they should. Still, other women left their work, because the arrival of their soldiers meant the ability to start again the pre-war plans, to be precise, marriage or pregnancy. However, there were a number of women who choose to stay at work. They took pleasure in their new found autonomy and the wages they had earned was also important to their own living, in the incident that they were lone, or had their families. Another thing is for sure that the effects of World War Two would be sensed for years to come. Women had practiced new breaks, a sense of autonomy and were experiencing their own independence31. Although some of the women that sustained to work after the war were given lower salaries and some even expected demotions, they had made improvement. The war permitted women to formulate their own decisions and it provided them a chance to battle for their privileges. There is no hesitation that the penalty of the World War Two directed to the progress of a lot of the civil rights activities of the 1950’s32. Women throughout and After the Second World War 18 Bibliography Addie, K. (2004). Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War. London: Coronet Judy Barrett Litoff & David C. Smith. (1996). American Women in a World at War: Contemporary Accounts from World War II. United States: Rowman & Littlefield. Madelyn Klein Anderson. (1995). So Proudly they Served: American Military Women in World War Two. United States: F. Watts. Kathi Jackson. (2006). They Called Them Angels: American Military Nurses. United States: U of Nebraska Press. Wyatt Blassingame & Gil Walker. (1967). Combat Nurses of World War Two. Random House. Emily Yellin. (2005). Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II. Simon & Schuster. Waller, J & Vaughan-Rees, M. (1989). Women in Uniform. London: Papermac. Women throughout and After the Second World War 19 Elizabeth Ewing. (1975). Women in Uniform through the Centuries. Batsford Dorothy Sheridan. (1990). Wartime Women - a Mass Observation Anthology. Phoenix Press Martin Brayley & Richard Ingram. (1995). WWII British Womens Uniforms. Windrow and Green. Hartmann, Susan. (1982). Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s. Boston Higonnet, Margaret Randolph. (1987). Behind the lines Gender and the two World Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press. Read More