Some women however, as well as finally being accepted in medicine, were also appearing as ministers and journalists, and entering the legal and literature worlds. Higher education colleges for women only were established, and proper tutors hired to train there. The late 1800’s finally gave women opportunities they needed and were entitled too.
Education during the 1920’s continued from this. By this stage a majority of women were interested in studying for higher qualifications. Opportunities by this time had expanded greatly for middle-class women, and also for women like the African-Americans, who previously, due to racial bigotry, had been ignored. Voluntary religious groups worked hard at gaining education rights for working-class women, and also to achieve equal learning opportunities for all cultures. Liberated initially from tradition in the 1800’s, the 1920’s saw women becoming stronger and more determined about equalizing professionally with men and the economy. However, throughout the 1920’s women still faced discrimination with wages, and still priority of employment was favoured towards men. Also, when the Great Depression hit the USA after 1929, women were still expected to give up their jobs to men.
In the late nineteenth and at the dawn of the twentieth century, women activists were illustrating the “new” American women of the day. They were particularly active in the cause of social reform. Many individuals campaigned for clauses like women’s rights, anti-slavery and putting a stop to child labour.
In 1869 Elizabeth Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association with Susan B Anthony, a group of mainly middle-class women who particularly represented the issues mentioned above. Having no political representative for the women made their aims harder, however they did achieve notable successes during this time. They argued that women, as human - beings, had a natural right to vote. It outraged them that the new amendment to the Constitution in 1865 gave all men the right to vote, even immigrant males, whilst women born in the USA were still denied. They said women were different and in some cases better than men, women, for example, were more noble, more spiritual, and truer of heart.
After much campaigning, in 1920, the Woman Suffrage Association was successful in achieving equal voting through the passing of the 19th Amendment. This newly acquired political power encouraged feminists to start working towards larger goals, social and economic equality with men, woman’s independence, and ethics in society. However, during the 1920’s the woman’s rights movement died down. This was due, in part, to the achievement of the goal of suffrage, but also because of the general retreat from activism in post-WWI America. Feminists of the time discovered, firstly, that women did not vote as a bloc, there was no such thing as the “women’s vote”. Secondly the struggle for suffrage no longer united disparate elements of the feminist movement and that thirdly younger women were less interested in reform and more interested in rebelling against social conventions. During the 1920s, because of the previous points, less was achieved, and the women’s progress stalled.
In the 1920’s a new woman was born, she smoked, drank, danced and voted. She cut her hair, wore make-up, and went to petting parties. She was giddy and took risks. She was a flapper. The word, “flapper” described a young woman who rebelled against convention. Like jazz music, the gangster, and the speakeasy, the rebellious and fun-loving flapper was a product of 1920’s urban America. Most American women were not flappers, but the flapper’s shocking behaviour set a tone that helped many women explore the Jazz Age freedoms without fear.
Before the World War I, the Gibson girl was the rage. Inspired by Charles Dana Gibson’s drawings, the “Gibson Girl” wore her hair loosely on top of her head and wore a long straight skirt and a shirt with a high collar. She was a feminine but also broke through several gender barriers for her attire allowed her to participate in sports, including golf, roller skating and bicycling.
Then World War I started. The young men of the world were sent off to the fighting with little hope that they would survive long enough to return home. They were inflicted with an “eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-die” spirit. While the boys fought against both the enemy and death in far away lands, the girls brought into the patriotic fervour and aggressively entered the workforce. It was during the war that both the boys and girls of this generation had broken out of society’s structure; they found it very difficult to return. The girls particularly found it difficult to settle back down to the old traditional rules and roles after the war. In the age of the Gibson girl, young women did not date; they waited until a proper young man formally paid her interest with suitable intentions (i.e. marriage). However a whole generation of young men had died in the war, leaving nearly a whole generation of young women without possible suitors. Young women decided that they were not willing to waste away their young lives waiting idly for spinsterhood; they were going to enjoy life.
The “Younger generation” was breaking away from the old set of values; they had liberated themselves from them. A “flapper was a lady who worked an unconventional, wild and reckless character. F.Scott Fitzgerald, an American writer described the ideal flapper as “lovely, expensive and about nineteen.” The name came about from their wearing of unbuckled galoshes that would make a “flapping” noise when walking. Flappers had both an image and an attitude. Liberation meant the freedom to dress and behave as they wished.
So were the 1920s an age of liberation for women? It was unquestionable that education opportunities had finally been expanded, and women’s talent’s recognised, instead of being confined to the domestic sphere. There were outstanding examples of women who had succeeded to establish themselves highly in society, but these remained in the minority. Though the prospects were open to women, they still weren’t necessarily encouraged. Marriage, home and family were still expected to come before career in a woman’s life. There was still little job security for women, though there had been an increase over the period of married women entering the workforce, most were forced by war and poverty. Opportunities for advancement, especially in the professions, remained limited, and inequality in pay and conditions customary.
It was an age of increased liberation for freewill and forthright action however. Women had become more confident about their abilities, achieving the vote gave them political power and assertion. With enough pressure and support it was possible to accomplish. The newly adopted flapper fashion was also an example of liberation; it gave women a new, radical image, spilling away from tradition.
In conclusion, the 1920’s provided an age for women of greater freedom to speak out and campaign for their rights. It was also an age of free-expression through resistance to tradition. Nevertheless, success with the campaigning during this period was limited, and the free-expression ineffective at always obtaining the desired reaction. The position of women during this period had no immense development from what had already happened during earlier years. Women still had a long way to go until they would be respected and allowed independence to match the opposite sex. Black women in particular saw very little distinction of treatment during these years from previous ones. Though some achievements were won, they were undersized to what was needed.
