hIST 2

History 202B: Winter 2012

PSA #5: The “New” Woman

Women gained the vote just as World War I ended and entered into the 1920s with their legal rights expanding and their social role changing. Increasingly, women attended college and worked outside the home; divorce laws were liberalized. Most famously, the 1920s saw the advent of the so-called New Woman and the flapper—a liberated women who embraced sex, short skirts, and smoking. Yet simultaneously the 1920s saw a reemphasis of the importance of women’s fulfillment in the home and marriage—rather than in the workplace. Women were still clustered in “women’s jobs” and the number of women in professions dropped. Life in the 1920s offered women a chance to experiment and redefine gender expectations and their place within American society.

Completely answer the following questions after reading the assigned documents.

1) After reading the “Marriage and the Family” section, explain how the relationship of women to marriage and family is changing from Progressive views of just a few years earlier. Issues you might discuss: do women seem happy being housewives, what do they want, what are seen as the problems for women, how are these attitudes different from Progressivism. This should take more than three sentences. Directly reference (this can include quotation, are mention of the particular reading) the readings to support your assertions.

From reading this section I found out that women don't seems to like being only housewives “A human being is not created like a bee which dies after accomplishing its only task.” in this sentence the author seems very unhappy with the tradition role for women of only being a wife and to take care of the children and making home a comfort zone for the husband which she express as a something she love but yet its not enough. they express unrest feeling for doing things and learn more and be engaged in society in a deeper level.

One of the reason why women even after getting a degree don't end up working is actually a result of getting married, as Join Watson address they like the “lie back” life and the comfortable of it, and its hard after this lie back period to go back and work which lead to a bigger problem seen happen to mid age women after they lose their normal life because of a death or a divorce, they been left on their own unskilled in a industrial world having only little to offer and lots of suffering to face.

Therefor they want to be engaged in society to get degree to be hired and work, to have the skills they need to be able to support them selves which also help them getting over the restlessness the experience after living a comfy life of a housewife.

2) After reading the “Sex and Sexuality” section, you should get the impression that something significant has changed regarding single women and sexuality. What has changed? How is this “new” woman different than those of the Progressive era? What social forces are blamed for the change? What do you think (not something you see in the text) is causing this shift in female sexuality?

What changed is that during World War I women filled the jobs of men and worked in deferent fields that they didn't work in before .But as the war ended women didn't want to give up their jobs and with it their freedom. They didn't want the old life of housewives as of those in the Progressive era therefore they found a places of their on and had a new life style where she can work and enjoy her time with her lover without the family or the work break into her personal life.

I think what changed them is the feeling of freedom and the financial security a job offer as well as they experience a more meaningful life that is more colorful than the traditional life style of progressive era.

3) After reading “The ‘New’ Woman” section, identify what makes these women “new” women compared to the Progressives? Explain why each individual woman is “new” (they all represent different types of the “new” woman). This should take at least four sentences.

Margaret Sanger is “new” in compare to Progressives due to the job she hold in birth control clinic which require high education and skills that only few women of progressives era had. Also she was new in her thinking, by looking at the macro level and being able to identify the problems married women faced such as dangerous abortions and for her challenging the norms of the society. To see the situation women are putting on and to consider it a form is slavery and trying to change it is a step i believe make her new in thinking and mark a great distinguish between women like her and the Progressives.

As for Clara Bow, she was new in compare to the Progressives because she freed her self from the society traditional role for women and she entered a new life style of stars that wasnt none for women.

As for Margaret Mead she object on the double stander of boys and girls the amount of standers and morality children face in the US and compared it to the Samoan children where in their culture the dont have to face such dilemma . She believe that sex is a natural pleasurable thing, and that there should be only one standard for both sex.

4) After reading “Feminist: New Style”, how does Bromley believe the “new” feminists differs from the women who fought and won the right to vote? Does she think the new style of feminism is better? How so?

They are different from the women who fought and won in their ideas of full life, new women believe that full life is a life where is married and having a career of her own not only to be a housewife or just to have a job and to only focus on that.

The Author do see this new life style for women is better for several reasons:

1- If she is economically dependent then her work will provide financial security to her that not children or love can provide.

2-In compare to the women who fought new women have wider range of interest.

3-They dont see men as enemy therefore they dont “abjure” men. and they care about there appearance.

4-New women dont let men and children take over her life even though it might take a large part of her life yet she sill self-conscious.

For this reasons and others, Dunbar think the new style feminism is better than the older form.

5) Considering all of the readings in this PSA, how would you define the “new” woman? How were women’s roles (sexual, economic, and as wives and mothers) reshaped by the 1920’s?

A Self conscious women who know how to hold the stick from the middle, who is able to balance her life between career and personal life in her home, who understand the duty of her as a mother and that her race depending on her at the same time she is aware of her rights and her rightful position in society and for this way of looking at life there was a change and new shape of the women role.

� Portions of this paragraph were taken from Bruce Borland, ed., America Through the Eyes of Its People (New York: Longman, 1997), 257.