Roles of Women in 1920s

The Roaring Twenties was the most violent for the European-Americans in Chicago with Al Capone, bootleggers, and the birth of the lottery all taking place in one state's city. It was also the birth of the Harlem Renaissance with jazz musicians paving the way for the next generation; as well as the revolutionary Othello production on Broadway and other artists such as Billie Holliday, Cab Calloway, and Bill Robinson making a statement for their ethnicity.

The 1920s saw Mobsters in Chicago on a war against each other to gain control of the area including the famous Valentine's Day Massacre.

In film, Silent movie star, Clara Bow became Hollywood's It girl by adapting the Flapper girl way of life. The decade also saw a lot of women starting to move away from corsets and started to wear long shapeless dresses that are heavily made with sequences and beads. This decade was in fact the golden age for art with writers and painters being able to express themselves in Paris, France.

The decade saw a lot of change for women in the working force. This was primarily due to the fact that they did and started to work during World War I. I know that may seem fascinating today but it was much more to them back then. It was a break from what they've been through in the past with the end to the Women Suffrages. By the time that their new way of life started to evolve, the job employment rate of working women increased by twenty-five percent; however, they were still being depicted as sex objects or sexual beings and most of them were still under house arrest and worked chores around the house. They were also not as free as their men and made no money whatsoever.

Women during the 20s were all given the right to vote so basically every women from the working class all the way to the upper-class can actually vote and have a say in politics. This was the main thing that women fought for during the 1900s and kept on fighting for.

With the marriage rebellion during the 1910s, women were able to get a divorce from their husbands easier and were able to keep their children safe from abusive fathers. It also increased the number of divorces up by two times as much as before.

City and urban women began to wear loose clothing. As I stated in the second paragraph, the dress were shapeless and heavily designed with sequences and beads giving women boyish figures. This fashion statement started when women began to say no to long skirts and corsets because of the lack of breathing room that the tight corset gave to them. The women that were this type of clothing were called Flappers. These girls smoked in public, and hanged out in speakeasies or around mobsters. The women who hanged around mobsters were called Mollies or Mobster girls. They also danced new dances such as the quickstep, the Charleston, and swing dances.


This decade made the 90s look like crap compared to what was going on around the time of sultry R&B and boybands. For me, this decade was the Mother of the 90s and the 80s because the women had more social fun and interacted with more people. Yes! I said and admit that we are slowly loosing our freedom to the controllers of our lives. We must value the free that the women in the past worked hard for I know that this was along time ago but what they learned then is still useful today. Even with the technology that we have, we can still find causes that will be relevant to the next generation or other countries, especially developing countries like the Philippines and India.

Sources

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/usa/1920srev2.shtml