Describe the Role and Status of Women in the 1940s and 1950s

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Describe the Role and Status of Women in the 1940s and 1950s

After the First World War women had gained a huge step towards having equality with men. In 1918 married women over the age of 30 were given the right to vote. During the war women had proved themselves as capable as men, not only as nurses near the front lines working in very dangerous positions but also back in Britain working to help the war effort in jobs that before the war they could never have even had a chance of getting.

However women were still a long way of having any vague equality with men, and when the men returned from war things changed as men were still considered far above women. Although it had got worse since the end of the war it should be recognised that women's role in society had been greatly improved since the days before the First World War.

During the Second World War many of the men were conscripted to go away to war. This meant that their jobs now needed to be filled in order for the country to work., women got jobs in all areas of employment from working in manual labour to working in banks. They also managed to prove that they could do the jobs just as well as men and were able to work in jobs that had previously been for men only.

Gaining all these new jobs had been a huge leap towards women gaining equality with men, however when the men returned from war most if the women lost their war time jobs. This happened because of a number of reasons. Firstly, public opinion in general believed that the soldiers who had been fighting deserved to come back to jobs and not have to struggle with unemployment. Also some bosses of small and large companies felt that men were still better and didn't want to employ women over men.
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A women who had worked as a welder during the war years was told, "Oh my goodness, you've got the best qualifications that we ever had apply for the job, but your a woman, and I wonder what the boys would say if I employed a woman." A newspaper editor was told when she was dismissed, "Oh its nothing wrong with your work, but we have to safeguard the succession and the successor has to be a man."

Bosses who were taking this line, and most of them were were infact taking and supporting the government's ...

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