Women in the 1920s
Women in the 1920s
Women of 1920 are remembered as “new woman”. Many changes enter in women’s life in this decade. Significant changes for women took place in politics, the home, the workplace, and in education. Some were the results of laws passed, many resulted from newly developed technologies, and all had to do with changing attitudes toward the place of women in society. The most important change was into the politics, women believed that they should have part in the country politics. When passed in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was promoted by Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party. This amendment proposed to eliminate all legal distinctions of sex. Having gained political equality, Paul insisted, women no longer required special legal protection. They needed equal access to employment, education, and all the other opportunities of citizens. In the end this group did not achieve success in the 1920s. Even with ERA failure women demand for personal freedom survived. Female liberation resurfaced as a lifestyle, sexual freedom in the 1920s meant individual autonomy or personal rebellion. Women now would have bobbed hair, short skirts, could smoke and drink in public, could make the use of birth-control methods as the diaphragm, the young, single “flapper” epitomized the change in standards of sexual behavior. She frequented dance halls and music clubs where white people now performed “wild” dances that before were popular just in black communities. What had been scandalous generations earlier, now women’s self-conscious pursuit of personal pleasure. In 1904 a women had been arrested for smoking in public, twenty years later cigarette companies were releasing campaigns to persuade women to smoke. The new freedom, however, was available only when after marriage. Having found a husband women were expect to seek freedom at home.
Women of 1920 are remembered as “new woman”. Many changes enter in women’s life in this decade. Significant changes for women took place in politics, the home, the workplace, and in education. Some were the results of laws passed, many resulted from newly developed technologies, and all had to do with changing attitudes toward the place of women in society. The most important change was into the politics, women believed that they should have part in the country politics. When passed in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was promoted by Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party. This amendment proposed to eliminate all legal distinctions of sex. Having gained political equality, Paul insisted, women no longer required special legal protection. They needed equal access to employment, education, and all the other opportunities of citizens. In the end this group did not achieve success in the 1920s. Even with ERA failure women demand for personal freedom survived. Female liberation resurfaced as a lifestyle, sexual freedom in the 1920s meant individual autonomy or personal rebellion. Women now would have bobbed hair, short skirts, could smoke and drink in public, could make the use of birth-control methods as the diaphragm, the young, single “flapper” epitomized the change in standards of sexual behavior. She frequented dance halls and music clubs where white people now performed “wild” dances that before were popular just in black communities. What had been scandalous generations earlier, now women’s self-conscious pursuit of personal pleasure. In 1904 a women had been arrested for smoking in public, twenty years later cigarette companies were releasing campaigns to persuade women to smoke. The new freedom, however, was available only when after marriage. Having found a husband women were expect to seek freedom at home.