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Women's Roles In The 1920s

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Although women in the United States were granted the right to vote in 1920 with the nineteenth amendment, subsequent world events, such as World War II, and home events, such as the Great Depression, returned women to their previous state of lacking political power and limited social roles. During the middle of the twentieth century, women were expected to adhere to the image of domesticity, to derive satisfaction only from being housewives and mothers. The social pressure to return to a life without the previous problems of the earlier decades, left women believing that their duty was to remain at home and to ensure the best for their families. This led to many women internalizing their frustrations with the lack of choices and independence that …show more content…
They were expected by male society to be happy with their “femininity” (476) and roles as caretakers of the family now that the men had returned home from the war and people were able to establish a suburban lifestyle oncemore. Friedan writes, “experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women hear in voices of tradition…that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity.” (476). With this, Friedan establishes that traditional beliefs pushed women back into their previous roles, compounded with the difficulties of the previous decades. Despite yearning for more, women across the nation were pushing back their own desires and living according to the guidelines imposed on them by the men within their life because it was a better state than the women living through the Great Depression or missing loved ones during the war. They were also afraid of being categorized as “the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women” (476), a status that was given to women who were unable to accept the standards and wanted to pursue higher education and a

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