There is plenty to suggest that women never got away from their traditional role. Neil DeMarco, The Second World War, Hodder & Stoughton, 2004. In your opinion are the views expressed by Neil DeMarco justified?

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The Second World War begun on the 3rd September 1939 and affected women massively. Not only did they have to go out to work in places like factories but they also had to do their traditional roles of cooking, cleaning and looking after the children. The women had to adopt new roles because the men were no longer there to do their jobs. In this piece of coursework I shall focus on how reliable the quote by Neil DeMarco is (“There is plenty to suggest that women never got away from their traditional role.”). In my opinion I think that this suggests that the women were in the home all the time. And I shall look at evidence supporting and disputing DeMarco’s interpretation throughout this coursework. In some ways it could be reliable because women still had their traditional roles because the jobs they had were giving out tea or being a librarian but this quote may not be reliable because women were more free and many worked in either the factories, being part of the land girls or WRNS. I shall look at a variety of sources to support or dispute this interpretation , primary sources, like diary accounts and pictures or ,secondary sources, from historians like Carol Harris or Juliet Gardiner. I shall also look at films such as Land Girls, Hope and Glory and Charlotte Grey. I think that Neil DeMarco’s interpretation will be quite reliable because many women did have traditional roles but others didn’t.

In this first section I shall explore the ways by which Neil DeMarco’s interpretation is correct and the reliability of it.

There is plenty to suggest that Neil DeMarco was correct and women didn’t get away from their traditional roles in the home. For example, all women had to struggle with the introduction of rationing and also feeding their children on limited food. They had to used ration booklets with daily coupons as there was only one other way to feed their children. This is proven in source E3 and the source is correct because the source shows women as gossips and struggling with rationing. This source could be reliable because it was made at the time, boosts morale and supports DeMarco however it was made by a newspaper so it could have been censored and approved by the government. This could be useful because it shows women’s role in the home, the women working together and DeMarco has evidence to back him up however this has been made by a newspaper and it could be biased towards the governments perceptions. Women who were good housewives during the Second World War were awarded medals. To back up DeMarco’s view is Poster (1) and shows a women with a halo on her head showing that women had a traditional role in the home and that the government encourage women to stay in the home rather than go out to the factories. This could be reliable because it was made at the time, encourages more women to stay at home and supports DeMarco’s view that women have enough to do at home however it was made by the government so they may have censored the poster to favour them. This is useful because it shows that DeMarco is not at fault that women had a big role in the home however many women went into factories and were more useful to the government in that way. Also, children were able to see their mothers cooking and cleaning in the home so meaning that women were still doing their traditional role providing for the children but also they were a figure for children to look up to and they show how important they were for the family. To back up DeMarco’s view source E1 shows that women were still working in the kitchen and looking after the children. This source could be reliable because it was written by a person who was in the war and supports DeMarco however the book he made was published after the time period so he could have forgotten things. This is useful because it shows that the government had provided a happy life for this boy by persuaded or helping his mother stay at home during the war and DeMarco is not incorrect in his interpretation however this is not useful because this is a biased view and therefore this is not a useful or reliable source. The historian Carol Harris shows that the women were still at home however she devoted a whole book to women so her interpretation could be more reliable. This could be a useful source because she has the knowledge, experience and sources to use in this age however she is a secondary historian and she does not know what it was fully like during the war. The women had to deal with the problems of clothes rationing as they had to make and mend clothes which was encouraged by the “Make-do and Mend” regime meaning that women didn’t need to worry if there was a stain. The source E2 supports Neil DeMarco’s view because it shows how women were always mending, cope with the demands of clothes rationing and trying to help their families proving that women had to stay in the house and make and mend clothes. This source could be reliable because it proves women had a traditional role in the home and supports DeMarco’s view but it was made by the government so it could have been censored. This is could be useful because it shows that women had to cope with the difficulties of the war and that the government used drastic propaganda to force the public to save their coupons up. However, this isn’t useful because it does not show the full picture of what was happening during the war and the government is quite biased in this source.

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But even these women may have had to work in the factories and have a traditional role. There are other reasons to suggest that women didn’t get away from their traditional roles in factories and Neil Demarco’s view was correct. For example, women caused a nuisance in the factories because they wanted separate toilets and expansion of facilities in the factory. This means that women were a lot harder to manage than men, this is proven in source E6 and this shows that Neil DeMarco’s view is correct as it proves that women were a nuisance. This could be ...

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