How Did The Role Of Women Change Throughout The 20th Century

Throughout the 20th century the role of women changed dramatically, causing a butterfly effect of shifts within society and the world as a whole. Initially the centuries old concept of women as homemaker and mother held up in the early 1900s but as time continued to pass, women gained new rights and roles in society. This change stemmed from a change of values, and thereby a change of culture. Ancient civilizations kept women, as the primary child bearers, closely linked to the home for protection, but as the economy sprung forth, women took the role of independent worker instead of just child-bearer. This concept gained real ground in the industrial revolution, and then in the world wars. After the world wars society lost much of its previous
Alfred Lord Tennyson, a famous writer, once argued that “Man for the field, woman for the hearth, man for the sword and for the needle she; man with the head and woman with the heart, man to command and woman to obey; all else confusion” (Tennyson 427-431). Yet the subjugation of women and their need “to obey” evolved dramatically in the coming decades. A new idea for women emerged; an “idea that respectable woman should renounce her role as wife and mother, leave her husband and children, and strike out on her own.” But this new idea “was seen as an insult to society’s most cherished values” (Yalom 263). Women, however, ready to break free from their former thrall, disregarded “society’s values”, and not only stiffed their traditional role as homemaker by entering the workforce as independents, but also cribbed their role as child-bearers choosing instead to focus on their own lives. This new type of woman was “recognizable by her education, her independence, her tendency to flaunt traditional family values and blur the boundaries between conventional male and female behavior” (Yalom 268). Women threw off old values, and began to focus on themselves as the primary goal for their life. Women had begun the 20th century movement toward equality among the genders and new roles of a
While previously, a marriage structured the lives, activities, and relationships of women, and “governed the essential processes of mate selection and sexual expression” as well as “childbearing and childrearing” (Thornton 3), nowadays the role of marriage itself in society remains blurred. Cohabitation, as generally described by U.S state laws as “two people living together as if a married couple” remains the standard normal route to relationships. No longer do people court each other, and concentrate on family values and ethics. They instead focus on the romance of relations, spending most of their time on the physical aspects or “sensuality” rather than the emotional aspects or “sentimentality” (Sri 32). But culture presently came to find that this emphasis on the fleeting feelings of raw intense passion ultimately does not build strong foundations for a relationship. Women, who disregard their traditional values founded outside the 20th century, generally end up divorced for lack of foundations and expectations in marriage. The woman, determined to retain her independence and carry on her “sex appeal” does not hesitate to offer herself physically to a man. But if the man no longer sees her as a full human, and only sees as an object of pleasure then ultimately the relationships that stems from the so called one-night-stand will not continue on steadily. As the women,