Candace M. Whitney
Professor Liza Kiesell
English 101
8 June 2013
Women at Home in WW1 and WW2
Before World War I and World War II, women at home had the roles of maintaining duties for their family and children, such as cleaning, caring for the house, and cooking for the family. As a single, working mother that still carries the above mentioned roles; I wanted to educate myself of the women’s role in and out of the home, the description of jobs they held and society’s reaction to their employment status during both wars. In order to achieve this, I evaluated two types of web-sites, educational resources such as Wikipedia and world history sites like Worldhistory.com. Although both were filled with a vast amount of information, I set out to determine which educated me the most.
According to Wikipedia, The first and second World Wars set a great change in the ways women interacted with the rest of the world. The informative web site tells us that while many men in the United States had to serve in war, women took on many of the roles at home that traditionally belonged to men. Women in both wars took on jobs in the war effort which included being military nurses, factory workers, journalists, and many more occupations that helped the war and occupied women in jobs that were primarily for men. Among the vast amount of information I was able to gather at my fingertips was that the most ordinary jobs women took during both wars was that of a nurse. Interestingly enough, women joined the military forces to become nurses that helped heal soldiers who were wounded and although men doubted the effort women had during an emergency situation, women proved themselves and men became more certain. An important job that was taken by women at home during both wars was working in a factory. Having so many men serve in war, women were obliged to work in factories and showed their best efforts into helping the war. Once women began taking over, the idea was caught by...