WOMEN IN 1940’s SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS OF WOMEN by Sophia Yang Cassey Namkung Diana Kim Young-Joo Lim Olivia Shin

SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS Women were expected to work hard, such as domestic service and in a factory. However most women were having duties at home doing chores, babysitting, educate their children and run the house while the husband is not there. The society thought having a child and educate and baby-sit would be a successful women. Also young women were expected to marry at a young age (around 18). Women were expected to be feminine, beautiful, strong and self-confident.

WORK For many women, the war presented opportunities they would never have been allowed in peacetime. The vast majority of women were in some form of paid or voluntary work, in the forces, civil defence, or other full- time role. The main exception was mothers caring for young children, which in the Minister of Labour's words was "a form of national service". The Women's Land Army was set up in June 1939, recruiting women interested in the outdoor life from factories, offices and shops. By 1943 there were almost 90,000 'Land Girls' aged

Thanks to newly working women, the munitions labour force swelled from one and a quarter million in 1939, to a peak of 8 and a half million in 1943, and two and a quarter million of these were not used to an industrial job. By this time almost every woman under 40 had a job of some sort, provided she was not physically unfit or heavily laden with family responsibilities or a billeted war worker. In July 1943, even women aged 46 to 50 had to register for war work. The so-called 'Grannies call-up' was very unpopular, but some workers were even older than that. More than a million men and women over 65 took on paid work, and even more were volunteers.

REPLACING MEN As Americans moved into the 1940s, the participation in WWII changes gender roles once again. In time of crisis Americans altered their understanding of roles and gender appropriateness, as the men went to war and the women filled in the production and wage-earning gaps. The escalation of the war furthered these changes. Whereas before the attack on Pearl Harbor, only single women worked in labor force, after the attack, married women were also pressed into outside employment. Women working was seen as a national necessity and a patriotic duty. The media and government propaganda worked to convince women that they could retain their femininity and still hold men’s jobs. These women were given new training and became very skilled.

Women also become better educated, as a group, during this time, as since the younger men (18 to 21-year-olds) were at war, women needed to fill college seats to keep colleges open. By the end of 40s, however, the war had ended and men wanted their old roles as leaders, breadwinners, and workers back, and justifiable felt entitled to this, as they had risked their lives for democracy and American values. Again, many women were fired and removed from their jobs— after all leaving those jobs was now their patriotic duty—but this time many women were angry and resentful because they had found a degree of self-definition they had not previously known.

-Thank you-