Essay & Practical Response

I realise I haven't written much about how my essay and practical work link, I thought it best to clear this up now.

Essay question:

How has the role of women changed in the last 100 years?

For the practical side of this module, I started by illustrating the most important dates for women's rights from the last 100 years - as I highlighted in my essay. Examples of work here. This informed my 8 Image task where I refined this idea to illustrate the defining moments for the change in the female role (in the last 100 years).

To take this further and to use the information I had gathered to make the points of my essay, I decided to create an educational publication. I continued using the important dates I had pointed out in my essay but expanded on the information.

For example, this section of my essay:

"At the beginning of the 19^th century, Victorian women were expected to aspire to marriage and as they were not allowed to work, they were expected to have certain ‘accomplishments’."

"As Victorian fashion trends limited a women’s movement to the point where they were often unable to do even household chores, it fell to the men to earn the money and be the sole provider for their family (Hughes, 2015). Women were expected to be intellectual - but not too intellectual – it was considered unfeminine and an attempt at usurping men’s ‘natural’ intellectual superiority"

informed this card:

I applied this method to all the information cards which made the whole project so much easier. This is because I already had most of the information I needed, it was just a case of illustrating it and tailoring it to a younger audience. 

"the freedom to work and vote began to change attitudes of younger women towards the mundane activities of a housewife. Young women of the 20’s began smoking, drinking, dancing and had a much more open mind about pre-marital sex."

"Almost a whole generation of young men had died in the war and rather than wait for a suitor, as women had done before the war, flappers decided to make the most of their lives. Their attire changed from long hair, long skirts, restricting corsets and high collars to short bob haircuts, bound chests and skirts that only reached the knee"

"World War II however was demanding that women step into the roles of the men away at war. Women began to learn new skills and were taking jobs that had previously only been held by men."

"The founding of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in 1942 meant that women’s wear needed to be more practical. It became much more acceptable for women to wear trousers and full skirts were much less popular due to fabric shortages. 

After all of women’s efforts during the war, they were unceremoniously booted out of the job roles they had stepped into as the men returned to society."

"The 50s are often regarded as a time of glamour and sophistication for women. However, it is probably more accurate to say that is was a time of oppression and patriarchy. 

Post WWII, women were expected to stay home and re-populate. There was indeed a baby-boom and in 1952, 75% of women were married – with the average age for marriage at 21."

"Cosslett, 2015, does go on to say however, that some women did continue to work as well as have children. The downside of this was that working women had almost no rights and had to work often to be allowed pay. On top of this, they had to continue with the other assumed roles of a woman. Household chores such as cooking and cleaning were seen as a woman’s job and men wouldn’t take on the responsibility for fear of being thought ‘unmanly’ – a repercussion of the patriarchal constructs. "

"After the oppressed role of a female in the fifties, women of the sixties began to fight back at society. Many women just weren’t satisfied with up to 55 hours of household duties a week. Working women were dealing with lower salaries than their male counterparts, denied opportunities to advance and were “generally unwelcome in professional programs” (Tavaana, 2015)"

"As a reaction to the “happy homemaker” that women were expected to become in the fifties, the women’s movement started to take off in the seventies (Hauser, 2015). Gradually society had to accept that working women were there to stay and as expectations for comfortable middle class lifestyles rose, it became essential to have two lots of income per household (Tavaana, 2015)"

"The failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in 1971 brought feminist political organisations such as the National Organisation for Women (NOW), the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Equal Rights Amendment Ratification Council and the Coalition of Labour Union Women, into the spotlight. Despite some of the political failures, women were still more successful in areas of business, politics, education and science than they had ever been before"

"Anderson, 2015 says that women of the 80’s were “enjoying some hard-won equality battles”. Society had accepted women into the workplace and the female role was less focused on household chores and family."

"‘Power dressing’ was incredibly popular in the 80’s and consisted of shoulder pads and tailored clothes (Thomas, 2015). The shoulder pads were reminiscent of men’s tailored suits and gave a woman an aura of importance. This “Corporate business suit dressing” gave some women the notion that they could be whatever they wanted to be (Thomas, 2015)."

"Women of the 80’s and 90’s were asserting their independence in almost every aspect of their lives. They were seizing opportunities to educate themselves and advance in their careers – whereas twenty years before, they would have felt too guilty to do this in case it was taking opportunities away from men"

"This breakdown of the patriarchy meant that the responsibilities of the home were more equally shared between a husband and wife and women no longer felt the need to prioritise motherhood. The effect this new found independence had on the female role could be seen as positive and negative"